Do They Know It's Christmas?

BY KATHY

In 1984, a “super” band called Band Aid formed to call attention to and raise funds for an intense famine in Ethiopia.  Band Aid consisted mainly of very popular Irish and British bands.  Forty artists came together to record a song named “Do They Know it’s Christmas”, which quickly rose to be the number 1 hit in the UK, staying there for 5 weeks.  Ultimately, $24,000,000 was raised for the famine in Ethiopia as a result of that song.

Now, with a perspective that comes from it being 2016, and also from living in Haiti, the lyrics seem odd and skewed to me.  (Especially strange is “Well tonight thank God it’s them instead of you”, which, when the song was re-recorded in 2014, thankfully was changed to “Well tonight we’re reaching out and touching you”, that line sung by Bono.)  Even with that line aside, the song has come under much criticism in recent years.  Lines like “a world of dread and fear”, “where the only water flowing is the bitter sting of tears”, and “the Christmas bells that ring there are the clanging chimes of doom” paint a picture of a land where the only emotion that is felt is despair and hopelessness.  Depicting an entire country and people group in a one dimensional fashion like that leaves out the rich culture and traditions of that place.

In 1984, when the original song was recorded, I was 23 years old.  There was no internet, at least not for the public, travel to foreign countries occurred far less frequently than today, and people of “developed” countries often viewed “the world out there” as a dark, scary place, and certainly through the lens of their own experience.  In defense of the original Band Aid group, to earnestly try to make a difference, increase public awareness of a serious problem in the world, and raise money to help famine victims was a noble thing, even though the lyrics of the song today may seem out of place.

Flip side – looking purely at the lyrics, I wonder how the writers of the song may have written them differently if they had lived amongst the people of Ethiopia for a while, worked with them, played with them, celebrated life with them, mourned with them.

 

Worshipping together

Wedding ceremony

Visitors to Haiti often have never been outside of the US before their first visit, and the extensive economic poverty, lack of jobs, poor infrastructure, and political instability are often all they can see.  I have to admit, my first few times in Haiti, these very things were such a contrast to my privileged life in the US, that I also had a hard time appreciating and embracing all that is Haiti.  And to this day, each day, I am learning new aspects of the language, social issues, and culture.

Haiti has extreme needs, it is true.  (I could also say the same about the US!)  But Haiti is so much more.  When we recently visited the hurricane-ravaged south, we were in a particularly hard-hit area when school let out.  We saw school children walking home, some skipping, some chatting with friends, others hand-in-hand (which is culturally appropriate for all ages).  Families who had houses standing housed families who had no house remaining.  Churches came together and praised God for sparing the lives of their families, and prayed for comfort for those who had injuries or death.  In this tragedy and in normal daily life, communities bonded together to help support and care for one another.

Best friends coloring after school

This sense of community and doing life together seems pervasive in this place wherever we go.  This is just one aspect of the rich culture here.  (Don’t even get me started on the beauty of the nature here!)  There is so much more than the negative social issues here that dominate the news and social media.

So, what is my point?  The only person’s reality we truly know is our own.  Whether we are trying to understand another culture, or just another person in our own culture, we can’t know the entirety of another person’s experience.  We need God’s grace to cover our interactions with others, to help us understand and love one another, and we need the humility Jesus lived out to know that none of us have all the answers.  At Christmas and always, I am forever grateful that God sent us a person to exemplify the love, humility, and understanding we humans need.

Father-daughter snuggles