Opinion Why Christmas is universal

In the Old Testament, history is shown to be shrinking, beginning with Adam and Eve, who represent embryonic humankind. Since their fall from grace, biblical awareness is shown as shrinking to “a chosen race”, and then to a “faithful rump” within it. This, in turn, shrinks to the one man, Jesus Christ. The reality of there being “no room in the inn” pertains to this spiritual pattern of shrinking. In the spiritual vision of the Bible, room-less-ness, or homelessness, is the byproduct of godlessness.

This aspect of the human condition has been intuited in a variety of ways by thinkers across the centuries. Man is born free, wrote Rousseau, but everywhere he is in chains. Shakespeare’s Macbeth feels, “cabined, cribbed, confined”. Dostoevsky’s Raskolnikov and Tolstoy’s Nekhlyudov share the same predicament. Victor Hugo’s Jean Valjean finds the world an extended prison. They, and a host of other characters, are emblems of the “room-less-ness” that marks human existence. In a sense, this room-less-ness is the source of all of human suffering. There is no “room” for being fully and freely human, except perhaps for the privileged, in any system in the world. Freedom of thought and expression, right to equal opportunities for growth and development, are all romantic ideals, hardly enjoyed by all in history. Inter-personal relationships are plagued by room-less-ness.

The room-less-ness that Jesus encountered at this birth becomes a central concern in his life and teachings. Addressing this universal reality Jesus said, “Abide in me, and I in you”. God is the home of the homeless, which is the “tiding of great gladness for all humankind” that Christmas is. In that sense, Christmas is also a mandate to be hospitable to everyone, which is subsumed in the commandment, “Love your neighbour like yourself”. Christmas is wherever human beings accept and love each other for no other reason than that they are human.

Social and emotional room-less-ness issues from the shrinking of the human person. Individuals in their millions are homeless — including those who own mansions — because human personality has shrunk to such an extent that there is no room except for oneself in one’s world. Ingratitude, on which Shakespeare’s Lear agonises, is a universal aspect of this. In its operative principle, ingratitude is nothing but the incapacity to be with even those who have done you a good turn.

The same applies also to the incapacity for faithfulness of which Judas Iscariot is a synonym. What does it mean to “betray” a fellow human being? Is it not that “the other” is perceived as a burden or an inconvenience? Infidelity and ingratitude are country cousins. Jesus had to be betrayed by his own disciple to highlight the reality that the capacity for fidelity is rare. Yet another aspect of the same syndrome is the incapacity for justice. Consider the “trial” of Jesus. He was tried several times. Each time he was found “not guilty”. The verdict? “Crucify him.” Surprising? Well, should not be. Man’s incapacity to treat fellow human beings justly is a fact of life and history.

The Christmas event denotes God’s redemptive intervention in human predicament, characterised by our incapacity to be fully human. To be human is to be hospitable to fellow human beings. It is to accept and love the other, wart and all. Life exists on the foundation of inter-dependence. But inter-dependence becomes a torment when the capacity to be human shrinks. In man-woman relationships gender-war displaces complementarity.

Spirituality seeks to reverse this “shrinking of the human person”; whereas religion takes advantage of it. There is “no room” for “the other” in religious communities. This is lamentably so in what Christianity has come to be. To be a follower of Jesus is to be under the mandate to love even one’s enemies. Christianity has absolutely no excuse whatsoever for dividing human beings into “us” and “them”.

The writer was principal of St Stephen’s College, Delhi