User:Irtapil/Christmas
Christmas
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- A friend suggested a section on "political nativity scenes" USA Today
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Do a main country section, and then refer back to is in the en:Christmas controversies # Islam
However many majority Muslim countries do celebrate Christmas, such as Palestine. Christmas festivities are most extensive in the city of Bethlehem (Arabic: بيت لحم, romanized: Beit Laham) in the West Bank region, because of its large Christian population and the specific significance of the city to the Christmas story.
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Yes, I do feel that deleting Christmas in Gaza was wrong. The Christian community in the Gaza Strip is very small, but they are … they were … the last remnant of a lager community. The last few of them are in the process of being violently displaced. Removing them from the page like that feels disconcertingly similar to the current real world situation.
But I do see your point about the Rockefeller tree, so possibly this is easily solved if there was a more fitting place on the page for that content? Is there a place you think the story about Gaza's tree would fit better on the page?
I wanted to tell that story somewhere on here, because Wikipedia is supposed to be educational, and the Christian minority in Palestine is something most English speakers are very uninformed about, and wiki is currently not helping. It seems almost none of the articles about Christmas mention them. You might think Christ himself was the first last and only Christian in the middle east if you read anything on here about how the world celebrates his birthday?
I put it there because when someone mentioned the Christmas tree article, and I remembered I'd seen multiple news stories showing a big tree in Gaza City, that won't be there this year, and might never be there again. I wanted it to be recorded somewhere that Christmas was celebrated in Gaza city, like here, somewhere central, public, and educational.
The last few hundred Christians in Gaza are currently, at this moment, in the process of being violently displaced. They are the last few members of what was previously a much larger community.
They - and their Muslim and secular neighbours they shared their community with - are also being obscenely misrepresented in the media as part of the rhetoric being used to sell this violence as an acceptable course of action.
Wikipedia is supposed to be educating people about the world. Religious diversity in Palestine - particularly in Gaza before "operation swords of iron" - seems like an urgently needed topic to improve on here.
Sorry I hadn't added the citations. I got interrupted and had trouble finding them again. I had one with a photo, we can't use the photo (not public domain or commons license), but the tree did feature more prominently in the refs I found. But whoever added that citation did ok. It supports what I wrote, "Christians in Gaza will light the tree in the YMCA square on Saturday."
I see how you get the bias impression from that reference, that suits does tend to have a pro Palestine angle, but articles that leave out things like travel restrictions when discussing what Gaza was like are obviously ALSO biased. Talking about Christmas in Gaza at any length without mentioning those restrictions is a lie of omission. A few news stories, usually from a USA media outlets, do talk about Christmas in Palestine while completely avoiding those issues, I think those are very biased.
Irtapil (talk) 18:46, 31 December 2023 (UTC)
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Sorry I hadn't provided the references yet. I got interrupted. I think I even included a note saying references pending? There are numerous news reports.
The Christian community in the Gaza strip is very small, but they are … they were … the last remnant of a lager community. The last few of them are in the process of being violently displaced. Removing them from the page feels disturbingly similar to the current real world situation.
People in the English speaking world don't know they existed. It is entirely appropriate for an encyclopedia to record that they existed, in that place, in Gaza City, before it was destroyed.
As far as I can tell, this article about Christmas had no mention of the Middle East, where the first Christmas happened? It is notable that this European tradition has made it back to the birthplace of the Christianity.
If the tree in Gaza city was not public enough, is there another part of the article where Christmas in Palestine would fit better?
I think there is a larger more public Christmas tree in Bethlehem, but not this year, out of respect for what is happening in Gaza.
Irtapil (talk) 16:14, 22 December 2023 (UTC)