CHRISTMAS, 2006
By Al Staggs, Chaplain and Performing Artist
Sante Fe, NM

Lights everywhere,
Manger scenes
On the lawns of churches and houses,
Christmas is here again.
But the lights cannot
Alter the darkness in our land,
The message of the Prince of Peace
Has been lost.
It has been rejected
In favor of the national policy
Of war,
Of torture,
Of greed
Of stealing from the poor.
And we beheld His glory,
The image of an Iraqi baby
Born in lowly Baghdad.
We bring Him gifts
Of White Phosphorous,
Rockets, machine guns and grenades.
The Advent season observances
Have little to do with meaning
And much to do with form and custom.
His birth has been dramatized,
Commercialized,
Trivialized.
It’s irrelevant to our time.
We can only see Jesus from afar,
2000 years ago.
Let us leave Him there
To salve our conscience,
To happily delude ourselves
That we are children of the One
Who came to bring Peace on Earth.
How can we dare honor the child
Who came to liberate the oppressed
When, by our policies, our votes,
Our lifestyles, we give evidence
That we are from the family
Of the oppressors.
That poor little child,
That refugee
Born under the specter of Roman domination
Has little in common with us,
The dominators.
The manger scene doesn’t fit,
It’s out of place.
It should be to us
An offense,
An indictment
Of all that we have become.
We cannot sing loud enough
To drown out the cries from Mosul,
From Fallujah, from Abu-Ghraib,
From Guantanamo
And from the homes of grief-stricken
Families who’ve lost their loved ones
On the fields of battles
That should have never been waged.
We don’t need the spirits of drink
In this season
For we have already become intoxicated
On our power
And our military might.

And it’s in this season
That we offer our billions
To confirm where our real trust lies,
Not in God,
But in our arms.
We’ve given the arms dealers
A blank check
And offered pocket change
For the needy.
There’s no room this Christmas
For the likes of Jesus and his family,
Not in our budgets
nor in our hearts.
We’ll collect our baskets of food for the poor
But it won’t make a dent in the lives
Who have been robbed by our policies
And our systems of greed
That rewards more to those who have
And robs those who have next to nothing.
We may as well just sing nursery rhymes
This Christmas
Rather than pretend that we honor the Christ child
With our old familiar carols.
They cannot be heard over the wailing
Of all those who are victims
Of our national hate
And our national greed.
So this Christmas I will remember the Christ child
And I will grieve.

Updated Saturday, January 06, 2007