Monitor columnist Walter Rogers says Christmas has become an international, secular holiday in much of the world. In an essay published this month, he recalls the great Christmas cheer among his Muslim and Jewish co-workers while he was working in Israel on assignment for CNN:
My Palestinian producer, Sausanne Ghosheh, bubbled as she sang and danced in the wintry high desert night under Christmas lights strung above Manger Square. A Sunni Muslim, she made a point of telling me how much she loved Christmas and how she and her Palestinian friends always celebrated it as children.
I will always remember my hefty sabra cameraman, Yehuda Chemel, singing “Jingle Bells/ Jingle Bells/ Jingle all the way” in a very pronounced Israeli accent, whenever we drove through Israel during the two weeks before Christmas. It was a rite of the season. Sure, it wasn’t as reverent as “The First Noel,” but it suggested Christmas is infectious.
But perhaps the most significant sign of Christmas’s ability to transcend religion is his anecdote about the Taliban:
In Afghanistan in December 2001, a bearded gang of Taliban fighters, all devout Muslims, emerged from Al Qaeda’s lair in the Tora Bora Mountains. They were dragging a Christmas tree for us journalists. If these Kalashnikov-toting Afghan fighters could bring us a Christmas tree, why can’t I wish you a Merry Christmas?
