The Baby Jesus

Dec 19 2013

It snowed in Jerusalem

the week before Christmas.

I saw the stranded cars

grid-locked, nosing into ditches,

glopped with festive icing

still freshly white.

The children are delighted

at the miracle of snow.

While grown-ups wander the streets

in quiet shock,

waiting for winter sun

to melt them off.

In the land of the Bible

Santa Claus has arrived.

In the season of peace and forgiveness

the Coca Cola elf

and the baby Jesus co-exist

with nothing in between.

Like everywhere else unholy

the fiery prophet has been lost

in the rush, and the jollity,

the man cum God

reduced to porcelain doll.

But in this sanctified place

traffic has stopped

and motorists walk

and people look dazed and perplexed.

Such unnatural quiet

in the old walled city

in fresh white snow,

this unseasonable winter

in the week before Christmas

in this year of our Lord.

Where sleigh-bells, and reindeer

would seem truly ridiculous,

except for the miracle of snow.

The poem began with a small picture I saw in the paper: a Jerusalem street scene of stranded cars glopped with fresh wet snow. All I could think of was the stark juxtaposition of stereotyped Christmas with the actual land of Christ -- the Jewish prophet (or, if you're a believer, the son of God), who had a lot of good things to say.

I wanted it to be a different take on the easily clichéd condemnation of the holiday's commercialization. And a take on how the true Christian message is lost amidst the glitz: the revolutionary Jew reduced to a smiling baby; the actual man overshadowed by the odd bastardized creation that is Santa Claus.

Coca Cola took the Dutch myth of a skinny elf and helped turn it into snow and sleigh bells and Rudolph's nose. So to see this Northern European version of Christmas suddenly super-imposed on the Biblical city of Jerusalem can only illuminate its absurdity. Although here, instead of Santa Claus, the snow brings unexpected peace to the frenetic city.

Traffic is heavy all day these days. There is too much rushing, too much frenetic buying, too much stuff. You don't need to believe in peace and love to feel revulsion and disgust. Of course, words like "revulsion" and "disgust" would have been far too strong, too unequivocally judgmental, to work in the poem. But at least I get to say them here!

My original title was The Miracle of Snow. But I think the key to the poem is "the baby Jesus". (Not to mention that The Baby Jesus will do a lot more to perk up the ears of any prospective reader!) Why is the nativity the centre-piece of this most important holiday? (And if not theologically important, then culturally.) I think because the smiling mewling baby is so much easier to take, so much less demanding, than the actual man. This is a childish theology meant for children; but unfortunately, one too many of them don't grow out of when they grow up.