There can be no authentic celebration of Christmas without a proper understanding of its religious significance, that is, of what Christmas really represents to Christians and to all men and women of goodwill. For many, it is just a time to make economic profit, a holiday season designed to break from the usual work routine, a time to travel, a time to be merry. While all these and more are what millions engage in during this season, its real religious significance provokes profound and sober reflection and challenges familiar assumptions.
In a world and country where the usual way of thinking is that to be powerful is to be distant from the weak; in a world and country where the powerful are usually oblivious of the plight of the weak and defenceless, the circumstances of today are not different from those of the time Jesus Christ was born. Just as there was no room for Jesus when he was born, there is no room for the poor and defenceless in the world of our time.
However, at Christmas, the Christian religion, rightly understood, invites, challenges, and encourages Christians and all people of goodwill to bridge distances, because Christmas signifies the closeness of God. Christmas signifies a season to traverse boundaries, not just of space when we travel long distances to be with our friends and families, but also boundaries of ethnicity, of race, of religion and of social and political status. Christmas is a time to celebrate a God who unites humanity to himself in the birth of a child.
This year, Christmas comes at a time when we are in dire need of bridging distances in Nigeria, a time when the consequences of distances we have created through repeated and recurrent mismanagement of our diversity in Nigeria have assumed frightening gravity and intensity. Some have, in fact, remarked that we have not been this distant from each other since the tragically disturbing ethnic cleansing events of 1966 to 1970, a period when young, idealistic, but misguided men in two regional factions of the Nigerian military plunged Nigeria into a thoroughly avoidable war, a morally reprehensible carnage in which many innocent lives were lost.
The lesson we have learnt from Nigeria’s history is that there are no signs that we have learnt our lessons, as the boundaries created then have widened six decades later. It is what one sees on the pages of social media where young Nigerians trade insults across and beyond the boundaries of religious, regional and ethnic communities. Social media has degenerated into a space where acolytes of politicians deploy hate speech without any sign that their principals are willing to caution them. By way of irony, therefore, we live in the same country, but we are distant from each other. And how can we ignore the sharp boundary between the rich and the poor, between the powerful and the weak, between our ruling elite and the people of this country?
Having lost sight of our common humanity in the struggle to attain power and appropriate and monopolise Nigeria’s resources, leaders and led are culpable for creating these needless boundaries. Having distanced ourselves from each other on account of our diverse religious, regional and ethnic affiliations, and having allowed our political elite to mismanage our distances through divisive rhetoric and conduct, we have found ourselves in a situation where we are unable and unwilling to join hands to address problems that keep us down as Nigerians. We have many things that worry us in the land: heightening insecurity, rising cost of living, lawlessness by leaders and the people.
The religious significance of Christmas, often lost through the commercialisation of the season, is the story of a God who is not distant from the world he has created. While human beings build walls of separation, the Christian religion proclaims the coming of God as man, a God who, in the birth of Jesus Christ, bridges the walls of incivility and separation that human beings have built. It is the story of an all-powerful God who unites human beings with himself in the birth of a fragile infant, a speechless child, a child whose speechlessness in a manger silences the powerful, casting the mighty from their thrones.
This feast teaches all a lesson. It teaches the high and mighty leaders of Nigeria to be close to the people, in imitation of a God who comes down to be close to humanity. It challenges leaders to unite and not divide the people so that, individually and collectively, we shall work to build Nigeria into a habitat for those who flourish.
With hostile speeches and with patently xenophobic immigration policies echoing and emanating from other climes, it should become clear by now that Nigerians and Africans are no longer welcomed in places where they used to be welcomed. But while we lament immigration policies of leaders whose derogatory rhetoric makes it abundantly clear that we are not wanted, that we are like the child Jesus for whom there was no room in the inn, this is the time to envision and work for a Nigeria where all can flourish without having to undergo the stress, humiliation and rejection of an immigration process deliberately designed to keep black Africans off the land of the powerful. This can happen if we embrace the story of Christmas, the story of bridging distances, in the story of the birth of a child called Emmanuel, a child whose birth signifies the presence of an all-powerful God who is not distant from the weak.
