Christmas started as a Christian feast but two centuries of human growth have turned it into a cultural event. In this feast, Christians celebrate the birth of Jewish Christ whose humble birth was uplifted by the gifts of three wise men from the East. Considering that the honored Jesus is believed to have been born in Bethlehem in a part of the world now known as the Mideast, the three wise men from further east may have come from anywhere the world over.
Whatever godly attributes Jesus had, he and his disciples changed the sweep of human history from fear-driven to forgiving. The Hebrew Jehovah of that time smote down enemies. Roman gods fought and undercut each other. Indigenous people of lesser fame worshiped the merciless gods of nature. But Christ and his followers upended those views with the simple common sense principle of the golden rule.
Do onto others as you would have done to you. is the golden rule. It is thought to date back 500 years before Jesus to Confucius. Open source suggests that all major religions including Islam embrace the concept of the golden rule. It seems that few people could argue with the golden rule and yet some do.
The cocept of white supremacy may be the most damning of all current concepts. It claims that the white race is superior to all others based on the short-sighted historical precedent set by the European expansionist period that lasted about 300 years. That era created a lot of carnage but it also helped to unify the world. Overall, European colonialization put western powers ahead of others with industrialized wealth. The end result of that expansionist dominance was two world wars followed by the institution of the United Nations to avert a third.
The United Nations Charter is modeled on the Constitution of the United States, which is basically an elaboration of the golden rule. By now, all near-200 UN member states have signed and ratified the UN Charter, meaning the golden rule is now enshrined in constitutions around the world under the rubric of democracy. But the fly in the ointment is human frailty.
The maze of legal operations between international agreement and incorporation into national law is inestimable among near-200 countries. Loopholes, potholes, cultural proclivities and plain human recalcitrance all afford violations of the golden rule.
White supremacy is no more than a current iteration of an ages-old repudiation of the golden rule. It is the claim that some people are beneath equal treatment. Popularized in the currently dominant west, the superior mentality is not restricted to whites. It operates worldwide among humans, whether between Tories and Labour, Republicans and Democrats, Hutus and Tutsies, settlers on indigenous lands. Whites now bear the burden of guilt for the practice of superiority but it wasn’t always that way and it can be upended by eliminating the physically obvious distinction of race now seen as central to dominance.
Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine had nothing to do with race. It was based on a combination of arrogance and lust to exert power. American hostility toward southern border immigrants has less to do with race than with indignation at the insolence of violating the golden rule. How would Russia like to be invaded and how would Guatemala like to be overrun by those more needy than they?
The basic issue of the ages old golden rule is lost in a complex world. But democratic values sum up the essence and Christmas is the time to celebrate and bring together that spirit throughout the world. Make it religious or make it secular, make Christmas an international holiday celebrating the golden rule.
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