Of Christmas, community and calling

I often wonder if Europeans comprehend the fact that Christ was a brown Palestinian Jew. Representation Pic

This year, I'm struggling to process the dissociation between my inner world and the one I inhabit in South Tyrol. There is a deep schism between the grief I carry with me daily because of the horrific annihilation of Palestinians in Gaza by the Israeli state and the various manifestations of the Yuletide spirit that has already inundated the streets and markets where I live.

On Sunday morning, I took my toddler with me to church about half an hour before mass could begin. I'd learned that the town band would be playing. I thought that even if I got a chance to hear them practise, that would be something. Why don't I just take my toddler with me to church for the service, you ask? Because the services are simply not child-friendly. The people who attend mass are usually older people and the instant they hear a toddler running around, I feel the heat of eyes glaring behind to determine its source. It's so different from India where no one bats an eyelid at a kid running around the aisle. When you consider the diminishing congregation in churches across Europe and contrast that against the hyper-vocal Christmas spirit… Christmas markets, Christmas decorations, Christmas music, Christmas crafting, Christmas trees, all centred around a predominantly white Baby Jesus, you start to understand how disconnected the festival is from its reason…

I often wonder if they comprehend the fact that Christ was a brown Palestinian Jew. I wrote last year about this western appropriation of Christianity. I think about it a lot. On the one hand, the music I hear in the parish church here is celestial.

The acoustics enable all forms of instrumentation, and the atmosphere feels so solemn. On the other hand, there is just one mass on Sunday because there are not enough churchgoers. There is also a shortage of priests. On the one hand, I have never managed to ‘find community' in any other church besides the one that was my parish church for the longest time - Holy Cross Church in Kurla. For at least 15 years of my life during which I was in the Children's and then the Parish choir and heavily active in the Youth Group and read in Church, I felt like I lived there part-time. On the other hand, the services here are so beautiful because the sermons are not heavily shame and guilt-based and are more sensitive to gender hierarchies and are even secular and thereby more inviting.

When I visit churches in Italy, I am frequently in awe of the architecture and the art within. This country has so many spectacular specimens of Roman, Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque styles. And yet, I often wonder if by giving the concept of congregation a physical form and architecture, if, in ritualising it, something ‘Christian' was irretrievably lost. Growing up, I always lamented how our church was not ‘beautiful', even though it is historic. But I still feel like it engendered community in a way I have not yet experienced in present-day Europe. I know it is unfair to make comparisons but I feel the need to make them because I have not been privy to them having been made. And I think there is something to be gained from reflecting on how Christianity manifests within a South Asian context. Watching Eric Effiong (Ncuti Gatwa), the queer Nigerian character in Sex Education, navigate his spiritual calling and his relationship with Christianity and his Nigerian identity has been a riveting experience. The Netflix show uses the plot device of the ‘calling' as a way of spiritually inviting Effiong to embrace baptism. I liked this because it considers what it means to be queer and to identify as Christian, which is also interesting given the Pope's recent stance on accommodating trans people in the church. It is not yet full acceptance, but it is something. I suppose, just as one cannot confuse the state with the people that live in it, I am learning to separate Christianity from the institution and to see how it is kept vital and alive because of the faith people have in the core doctrine of love.

Some decades ago, during confession, a priest told me how it is very easy for us to love god because it is an abstract entity. It is much harder and more challenging to love our neighbour instead. This has stayed with me and every now and then I reflect on it. I marry it with my consideration of what Simone Weil had to say about living as though god didn't exist, doing good for the sake of doing good and not for any reward. My feminist self finds this approach a lot more relatable. At the same time, I will admit to having promised to light a candle for St. Anthony if I was able to procure my birth certificate
from Kuwait. Does this make me a hypocrite or does it validate me as a believer?

Deliberating on the life and times of Everywoman, Rosalyn D'Mello is a reputable art critic and the author of A Handbook For My Lover. She tweets @RosaParx
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