A White Christmas in MENA? |
In some places it comes early, in others late. Some mark it on the twenty-fifth of December, some wait until January, and some observe it quietly, without date or decoration, as one observes a memory. This is a region that does not agree on much, including when miracles are meant to occur.
Here, where the story began, Christmas rarely looks the way it does on postcards.
There is no natural snow in Bethlehem, only pale hills and a sky that knows restraint. There is no pine forest in Nazareth, only olive trees older than most empires. The cold, when it comes, is modest. The holiness, when it appears, is unadorned. The miracle, famously, required neither weather nor spectacle.
And yet the modern Middle East imports winter with enthusiasm.
In MENA, December is staged with professional confidence. Fir trees cross oceans, blinking beneath palm fronds. Malls bloom with icicles made of plastic belief. Carols echo under domes of air-conditioned sky, their theology softened for retail. Peace on earth is offered in instalments, joy guaranteed while stocks last.
Snow falls indoors on command in the Mall of the Emirates, Dubai. Penguins process solemnly across the ice, bewildered monks in a........