Although Christmas has strong associations with gift giving, the Christmas story is not about charity.
It’s true that due to the inequalities and vulnerabilities that 2020’s bushfires, pandemic and accompanying government responses have exacerbated charities are having to work harder than ever and our generosity is sorely needed.
Charity is the voluntary giving of help to those in need, and that giving is a commendable and loving response to the growing hardship around us. But it’s not what the baby in the manger points us towards, and where it is interpreted as such it neglects the deeper meaning of the Christian narrative – that is, to encourage us to consider why that need exists in the first place.
Charity is required wherever there is a lack of justice, inclusion and equality.
This child – Jesus – would become an adult who, practicing non-violence and habitually breaking social norms of exclusion, would demonstrate true humanity by giving up personal power and privilege in solidarity with people shamed, ignored and exploited by those who benefited from the unjust economic and cultural structures of the day.
Charity asks us to consider what one can do to meet another person’s need. Justice demands us why that need exists at all. Charity requires us to give of our excess. Justice calls us to exert the strength of our collective influence over the systems that privilege us with excess at the expense of others.
Charity is always the more comfortable option.
The festive season is also the annual peak of men’s violence against women – another epidemic accelerating throughout the Covid-19 pandemic. Governments have responded to this rampant national crisis with additional funding, as of course they should, but their charity has not nearly met growing demand for the services required to give women safety, support and housing.
However, justice calls us to look deeper, to address the cause, recognising this intimate terrorism as a symptom of patriarchy and colonial ego.
Australia’s consistent and persistent political and cultural narrative is that the powerful use violence and punitive coercion to advance their self-interest and reinforce their authority.
This is mirrored in what men do – it is what has been taught and modelled as strong, determined leadership, protecting society from chaos and disorder, it is the way our leaders maintain national security, prosperity and pride.
We punish the poor for being poor and denigrate unemployed workers for not working in non-existent jobs. We put downward pressure on wages while making others rich from the neglect of elderly Australians. We deny First Nations people self-determination and a voice while visiting gratuitous cruelty on people seeking asylum. We are scapegoating refugees, migrants and people of Muslim faith so we can blame something other than pervasive greed for the violence of poverty, insecurity and marginalisation that ravages huge parts of our population.
Leaders are lauded for this kind of strength – the kind that doesn’t blink in the face of children self-harming in detention, that tightens the screws on those living below the poverty line while offering huge tax breaks to those actively striving to pay their workers less.
There is an arbitrary line between what is acceptable violence and unacceptable violence. The state can use violence to achieve its ends and we celebrate its leaders for their callous strength, all the while trying to educate the public to do otherwise.
Not only is the gender inequality that creates the space for men’s violence against women culturally ingrained, but modern history also trains us all to believe that violence, control and systemic subjugation of those we see as lesser than ourselves are the valid and vote-worthy actions of those we install in our highest positions of power.
We inherit inequality and are trained in violence as a political norm.
As Audre Lorde said: “There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.” Justice calls us to consider how interpersonal harm intersects with cultural and political violence. The temporary migrant woman whose insecure visa is being exploited by her coercive controlling husband. The First Nations children growing up experiencing the impact of generational trauma caused by the same colonisers who are telling them to pull themselves out of the poverty our racism perpetuates. The mother unable to leave a violent relationship because their partner is employed – and there are no secure jobs with a living wage available for people of their age or experience.
Beyond charity then, what can we do? We begin with humility, reflecting on our own role in creating or maintaining these cultural drivers of gendered violence and then set about dismantling them in ourselves, our communities and the institutions that benefit from their maintenance.
We stand with all of those who work to support people suffering due to this endemic national disease and prevent it from happening again.
We raise our voice to ensure they have every resource they need to do their vital work. We challenge and change laws, structures and systems that prevent women from flourishing in full equality, using our vote and our solidarity to support leaders willing to move beyond charity towards social justice.
And we choose, as modelled by the child celebrated at Christmas, to use whatever power and privilege we possess to bring about change for the people who need change most until we dismantle the patriarchy and the violence it glorifies together. That’s the less comfortable but more accurate message of the baby in the manger.
• Brad Chilcott is executive director of White Ribbon Australia and founder of Welcoming Australia
