2023-12-25 05:27:14
The Christmas holidays were marred by “the roar of weapons” in Gaza, in the words of Pope Francis, and by the persistent conflict in Ukraine, where they are celebrated for the first time on the same date as in Western countries, in open defiance of Russia.
“Our heart tonight is in Bethlehem, where the Prince of Peace continues to be rejected by the losing logic of war, with the roar of weapons that also today prevent him from finding an inn in the world,” said the Argentine pontiff during Christmas Eve mass in St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican.
– Joy, absent in the Holy Land –
In Bethlehem, the city where Jesus was born, according to Christian tradition, in the occupied West Bank, most Christmas events were canceled, a sign of the lack of spirit due to the war in Gaza.
“It’s difficult to celebrate something at a time when our people are dying,” Nicole Najjar, an 18-year-old student interviewed in a deserted Manger Square, told AFP.
In the Nativity Square, in the place where they used to put a large Christmas tree and a human-sized manger, they have installed a work of art that represents Mary and Joseph in the middle of the rubble and behind a barbed wire .
This year there will also be no Christmas parties on the streets of government-controlled Syrian cities, and main churches will simply pray in solidarity with the victims of the conflict in Gaza.
The Ministry of Health in Gaza, ruled by Hamas, announced on Sunday that Israel’s bombings and ground raids in that Palestinian territory have caused 20,424 deaths, most of them women and minors, since October 7.
Nearly 1,140 people were killed on Israeli territory in the unprecedented Hamas attack that sparked the Israeli offensive.
– Western calendar for Ukrainians –
Almost two years after the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Ukrainian Orthodox Christians attended religious services on Sunday afternoon – at the same time as the rest of the Western world – to celebrate Christmas, in a sign of defiance to Moscow.
“We pray for the end of the war. We pray for victory,” declared President Volodymyr Zelensky.
“For peace, for justice,” he added in front of a majestic monastery that housed the primate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church dependent on Moscow until the end of 2022.
It is the first time in the modern history of Ukraine that Orthodox believers will celebrate Christmas on December 25 in sync with Catholics, but also with the Greek, Romanian and Bulgarian Orthodox, and not on January 7 as they did until now.
The Russian Orthodox Church maintains the old Julian calendar for religious holidays.
The new date of the Christian celebration, determined based on the Gregorian calendar, was approved by the Ukrainian Parliament in July and promulgated by Zelensky to distance himself from Moscow.
– Santa’s “tour” –
In Turkey, on the site of the Antakya Orthodox Church, destroyed by the earthquake that devastated the south of the country on February 6, the authorities preferred to be cautious and celebrate Christmas Eve mass in the middle of the afternoon, in a city still submerged. in the chaos.
To divert attention from the difficult international situation at the end of the year, Santa Claus began his “tour” on Sunday, under the close surveillance of the US military, which for decades has been disseminating information about his “movements” every December 24.
His sleigh “departed” from its base at the North Pole and flew over the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, at 3:38 p.m. GMT, according to the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), and has already distributed more than one and a half billion gifts in Oceania and Asia.
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