Regular visitors to our home will notice an odd addition to our Christmas décor this year. Among the traditional trinkets that adorn our tree glistens the tarnished silver of a used tear gas canister. The neatly tied red ribbon adds a little festive flourish, but there is no masking the distressing origins of this most unlikely of Christmas baubles.
Now, you might be wondering why we have decided to display a weapon of war among the singing angels and the golden stars. It is certainly an odd choice to mark this season of joy at our Saviour’s birth. But after some time spent in Bethlehem earlier this year, I felt I had no choice but to add this tear gas canister to our seasonal repertoire. Small as it is, its presence is enough to remind me of the reality of life facing our Christian sisters and brothers in the town of Jesus’ birth, our fellow believers who strive to witness to the Gospel of Christ in the most challenging of circumstances.
When I arrived at Bethlehem with my colleagues, Rev Corrina Heron and Rev Susan Moore, I was struck immediately by how different this modern town is from the “little town” we sing about at Christmas. The words I have caroled so readily between the nine lessons each year are entirely incongruent with the situation facing contemporary residents. The town no longer lies still while silent stars go by. Instead, as one contemporary reworking of Phillips Brooks’ beloved carol puts it:
O broken town of Bethlehem your people long for peace, But curfews, raids and barricades have brought them to their knees.
While Christian visitors to the town typically stay only a few hours (if they visit at all), Bethlehem became our home for the better part of a week. We were there to represent PCI at the Christ at the Checkpoint conference, organised by Bethlehem Bible College. This enabled us to spend time with the college faculty and local church leaders and to listen to their experience of living out their faith under the shadow of the infamous separation wall.
It is perhaps not surprising that pilgrims make only a brief stop in Bethlehem. It has the unfounded but ubiquitous reputation of being hostile to outsiders. This false impression is created in part by the large red sign displayed at the checkpoint going into the town, which warns Israeli citizens that entrance is forbidden and dangerous to their lives. This official warning of the Israeli government is illustrative of the suspicion of the other that exists on both sides of the wall. Recently I heard an Orthodox Rabbi, Hanan Schlesinger, remark how he had lived thirty years beside Palestinians on the West Bank, and yet he had never heard their stories or even met them. “How can this be?” he wondered. This question eventually led him to found Roots, a reconciliation movement that works to bring Israelis and Palestinians together. But such opportunities for encounter are rare, and the fact remains that unhelpful stereotypes exist.
This is something we learned first-hand. Growing up in Northern Ireland it is impossible to look at the situation in Israel-Palestine through an unbiased lens. Very unhelpfully, the conflict in the Middle East has been conflated with the troubles in our own part of the world. But my short time spent behind the wall unsettled some of my own unconscious bias and introduced me to the complexity and tragic beauty of this ancient part of the world. For one thing, the red sign’s sobering warning proved to be unfounded. For the better part of our visit, we felt safe in Bethlehem (with the notable exception of our self-imposed confinement on the last day of our visit, when Israelis and Palestinians clashed over Jerusalem Day marches). Each morning we made the short journey to the college on foot, waving as car after car honked its horn and drivers shouted words of welcome. Each evening we made the same journey through the dark streets, never once feeling vulnerable or at risk. On every occasion, we found the people of Bethlehem to be hospitable and gracious to their foreign guests.
That said, it was clear to us that Bethlehem was a broken town. In the course of our week, we witnessed the chaotic Checkpoint 300, where thousands of permit-holding Palestinians cross into Israel each morning to work in menial jobs. We visited the largest of the three refugee camps, which has existed in Bethlehem since the “nakba” of 1948 and where families live in cramped accommodation, interminably waiting for a return home. And we walked along the graffiti-strewn separation wall, which was constructed as a temporary solution in 2002 but which has become a seemingly permanent scar on the land. This 440-mile-long wall carves a jigsaw-like border between Israelis and Palestinians, separating families and incubating the already ingrained suspicion of the other.
In recent years, the anonymous artist Banksy has attempted to shine a spotlight on the wall with the opening of the Walled Off Hotel. On its website, the hotel boasts of scenic views of concrete slabs and military watchtowers for all its paying guests. We didn’t get a look inside any of the guestrooms on our visit, but we did have an opportunity to view the art on display in the hotel lounge. Most striking of all was Banksy’s nativity scene, depicting the holy family taking refuge under the shadow of the wall with a bullet hole in place of the star. Whatever we might think of Banksy’s arresting image, it is a reminder that it was in this broken town of Bethlehem that the Saviour of the world was born. It was on the hills where the separation wall now stands that the choir of angels sang of peace on earth.
That’s why I will continue to hang my gas canister bauble each year. To me, it is more than a reminder of present reality in Bethlehem. It is a symbol of hope for Bethlehem’s future. The prophet Isaiah anticipates this hope when he gives us his wonderful vision of God’s future when warfare will cease:
He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore. (2:4)
My tear gas Christmas ornament illustrates this hope. It was fashioned from the thousands of canisters that were strewn across the street outside Bethlehem Bible College during the protests in the run-up to Christmas in 2015. Many mornings faculty and students would arrive to a confetti of debris from the previous night’s burst of tear gas, among the barrage of rubber bullets, stun grenades, and skunk water. But as people of hope – as followers of Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace – they were not content to let the aftermath of the carnage remain. One of the students in the MA Peace Studies program inspired the idea of collecting the canisters and transforming them into what he calls “Peace Parcels”.
There is much in O Little Town of Bethlehem that jars with the present context, but the parcel of peace hanging on my tree attests to the carol’s prevailing truth despite the seemingly intractable conflict. With a resounding “yet”, we can sing with confidence this Christmas, along with our forgotten brothers and sisters, that “in thy dark streets shineth, the everlasting light. The hopes and fears of all the years, are met in thee tonight.”
To purchase a tear gas canister Christmas tree ornament, visit starbazaar.bethbc.edu
(A version of this article first appeared in The Herald magazine.)