Commentary 25/12/22 It’s a bad time to celebrate Christmas

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Published: December 22, 2025 11:56 AM

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Palestinian Issa Kassissieh, dressed as Santa Claus, poses for a picture as he rides a camel on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, a few weeks before the upcoming holiday of Christmas on Dec. 6, 2022. Jesus was born homeless in a poor family that was forced to become refugees by a murderous ruler. (Photo: AFP)

It’s a bad time to celebrate Christmas.

War continues in Ukraine with expansion to the rest of Europe increasingly spoken of as an inevitability. In spite of ceasefire promises for Gaza, mutually intended genocide adds to the suffering of people whose very existence is treated as justification for terrorism and military assault.

Religious persecution in Myanmar, India, China, Iran, the Middle East and elsewhere victimizes Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Jews, Muslims, and indigenous religionists while those who are victims in one place become victimizers in others.

Refugees from violence and poverty often find no welcome as they seek safety.

Domestic violence, addiction, and organized and unorganized crime blight families and communities. A breakdown of civil society and corruption erodes the trust essential to maintaining society. Intolerance and even violence in deed as well as word are perpetrated against those whose ideas, race, or political or sexual orientation are taken as a personal affront.

Political leaders devote energy toward gaining and keeping power instead of toward the good of those whom they supposedly lead and serve. Demagogues manipulate gullible populations.

Despite medical progress, disease and those who refuse to trust medical progress threaten individual and societal health. We are yet to fully recover socially and economically from the latest pandemic and more are inevitable.

Despite conferences and commitments to protect the Earth, selfishness and stupidity still overrule attempts to ameliorate, let alone reverse, the destruction of our environment.

Personally, we experience frustration, health problems, financial stress, damaged relationships, family frustration, tragic interruptions in our settled surroundings, and the gnawing truth that our lives have an expiration date.

There is no doubt about it: this is a bad time to celebrate Christmas.

Like every time.

A century ago, in the aftermath of what was billed as the war to end all wars, the English poet Thomas Hardy wrote a poem titled Christmas, 1924.

“Peace upon earth!” was said.

We sing it,

And pay a million priests to bring it.

After two thousand years of mass

We've got as far as poison-gas.

At Christmas 2025, after an additional century of Mass, the poison gas of World War I seems almost quaint when compared with the “progress” we have made in destroying one another since then.

If we want to celebrate Christmas, we have no choice except to do so in a bad time. It is not only unavoidable, it is the whole point of the reality we remember in this season.

Jesus was born in a bad time. Though we do not know precisely the year, we know it was bad. (Scholars generally put his birth sometime in the first decade B.C.)

The Roman Empire ruled the world in which Jesus was born. Heavy taxation and generalized cruelty, even for entertainment, were hallmarks of that rule. Jesus was born as one of a subjugated people. The religious leaders of the Jewish community were in a mutually profitable relationship with the oppressors.

Medical knowledge was primitive and treatments were often harmful rather than healing. Infant and child mortality were common, as was maternal death in childbirth. Pirates and brigands made travel dangerous. Housing for most people provided scant shelter. Food supplies were dependent upon local crop success and hunger and even famine were a constant threat. People feared demons that they felt to be omnipresent.

Luke’s Gospel tells us that the Holy Family was poor (their offering at the temple was merely a couple of doves) and that Jesus was born homeless. Matthew tells us that a murderous ruler forced that family to become refugees.

Jesus was born in a bad time.

So, if there is no good time, should we not bother to celebrate Christmas?

A bad time is the sole time in which we can celebrate, since there is no other kind, but it is actually the best time to celebrate Christmas because Christmas is God’s answer to bad times. If all were calm and all were bright, would we need or know we need some intervention by God?

The Incarnation is God’s response to the bad times that we seem forced to consider normal. Matthew’s Gospel refers to Jesus as Emmanuel, “God is with us.”

Obviously, the coming of Christ that we celebrate at Christmas has not suddenly fixed the world.

It does two other things, however. First, it assures us that in the worst of times, we are not abandoned by God. True, God does not fix things as we wish. Instead, on the cross, God takes upon Godself the worst of the bad times in communion with us.

The other thing that Christmas reminds us is that though God has not magically fixed the world’s bad, in Jesus we learn how we ourselves can, with God’s help, do the fixing.

Unselfish, loving service of others, including those who make our time bad, is the way we put our communion with God into action.

Bad times remind us that we are powerless to end them, but remind us as well that in Christ, God is with us and gives us a model for living in bad times. So, perhaps we need a bad time in order to truly celebrate Christmas.

*The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official editorial position of UCA News.