Twinkle Lights on Displacement and Justice

Every December, Christmas gets a serious glow-up. Twinkle lights, matching pajamas, holiday movies where everyone has excellent bone structure and zero unresolved trauma—it all makes it feel cozy, comfortable, and… predictable.

Which is ironic, because the original Christmas story? Not cozy. Not predictable. In fact, it’s kind of radical.

At the center of it all is a young woman saying, essentially, “This is what happened to my body.” In her society, that was not exactly a category people respected. She wasn’t wealthy. She wasn’t powerful. She wasn’t married. She came from a tiny village nobody cared about. And yet, the story hinges entirely on people trusting her. Whether you call it divine mystery, myth, or metaphor, it’s a clear message: big, world-changing things sometimes start with voices that society is trained to doubt.

Then, right after the big birth moment, things do not calm down. Instead, the family flees political violence in the middle of the night, across borders, just to survive. By today’s language, they’d be called refugees. So while Christmas often feels like a story of stability and peace, the first Christmas was about finding safety where you could—hardly the “perfect holiday” image we’ve been sold.

Enter the Magi: outsiders traveling from afar with gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. They didn’t belong to the community. They didn’t share the culture. They simply showed up and offered what they had. No lectures, no demands, no moral superiority—just generosity that actually mattered. Imagine if more wealthy people today did the same.

And then there’s the ultimate subversion of expectations. If you were writing a story about God entering the world, you might pick a palace. Or at least indoor plumbing. Instead, the setting is humble. The first witnesses are shepherds, people whose résumés and social standing made them invisible to most. Power doesn’t arrive flexing. It arrives present, quietly showing up where it’s needed most. Humility becomes strategy. Presence becomes influence.

The remarkable thing about this story is that you don’t have to believe every supernatural detail to get the point. It’s about listening to voices that don’t benefit from lying, protecting families from harm, sharing resources rather than hoarding them, and valuing people over power. That’s not just a religious idea—it’s a human one.

So maybe Christmas isn’t just about theology. Maybe it’s about noticing who we trust, how we care for the vulnerable, and how we measure strength. Maybe it’s about generosity that actually helps, humility that truly matters, and paying attention to the upside-down ways the world sometimes changes. And honestly, that makes the holiday far more interesting than yet another perfectly decorated tree.

🎄✨