Gaza lights candles during Christmas, not to celebration in the New Year, but in grief and sorrow
Dec 24, 2024
For the second year in a row, the Christmas season passes while Gaza remains under genocide. While the entire world bids farewell to 2024 and celebrates the arrival of 2025, Palestinians continue to suffer under Israeli aggression, which kills, starves, and displaces civilians in Gaza with brutal cruelty.
In Gaza, candles are not lit for celebration, but for mourning. The people of Gaza have forgotten joy, yet they have not grown accustomed to sorrow, as their hearts still beat with a love for life, despite the Israeli occupation depriving them of it for seventy-five years, and continuing to do so. Fourteen continuous months of the Holocaust carried out by the Israeli occupation in Gaza have claimed the lives of more than forty-five thousand martyrs. No home is left without a victim who has lost their life, a prisoner, or someone who is injured. No one in Gaza can feel joy, experience happiness, or even think of lighting candles except in mourning for the graves of their loved ones who lost their lives due to Israeli aggression.
Children in Gaza do not rejoice in the new year. They will not go to school to learn, nor will they receive gifts or see Santa Claus. The Israeli occupation has closed all land and sea crossings into Gaza, dividing it into two, separating the north from the south. The children there cannot find food or water, so how could Santa Claus bring them gifts? For Gaza’s children, joy has become limited to surviving one night without being targeted by Israeli planes in their tents. Yet even this fragile hope has been denied by the Israeli occupation, as not a single night passes without massacres against these children and their families.
In Gaza, there are no plans for the new year, nor any accomplishments from the past year. Life here is known for its constant suffering—displacement, hunger, farewells to loved ones, fear, and anticipation. Stability, life, and happiness have lost their way to Gaza, replaced by the paths of Israeli military vehicles funded by nations supporting the occupation, and the boots of Israeli soldiers, with international legal immunity that shields them from accountability for their crimes against the Palestinian people in Gaza.
In Gaza, families do not gather at the end of the year to watch a tragic or horror film. Homes have been destroyed by Israeli war machines, families displaced by the Zionist occupation, scattered, and their members killed. There is no need to watch a film because the reality of terror and sorrow is unmatched anywhere else. Gaza’s civilians have known nothing but this misery for over a year.
In Gaza, people do not take Christmas photos or wear festive hats. Everyone here feels alone and sorrowful. Loved ones and relatives have donned shrouds instead of festive hats. Instead of standing with us to take commemorative photos, they were captured in their last images in mortuary refrigerators after being killed by Israeli forces in collective punishment. People in Gaza know no picture other than that of death and farewells for the past 444 days.
In Gaza, Christians do not hold New Year’s Eve services in their churches because all places of worship have been destroyed by Israeli aircraft, including the Church of Saint Porphyrius, the third-oldest church in the world, and other religious sites of historical and symbolic significance.
In Gaza, Palestinians do not hold feasts to celebrate the new year or share meals because they have faced famine since October 2023 due to the ongoing Israeli blockade, the closure of crossings, and the prevention of aid from entering Gaza. Civilians in Gaza endure severe collective punishment, systematically starved through the denial of aid, the absence of governance, the dismantling of civil society institutions, and the targeting of charitable activists. Today, Christmas comes for the second year in a row, and Gaza’s people remain with empty stomachs.
Civilians in Gaza do not hear Christmas carols or any other songs. The melody in this city is singular—the sound of planes carrying terror for children and women and death for them. Since the beginning of the genocide against Gaza, we have heard nothing but the sound of warplanes, indiscriminate shelling, artillery, and gunfire. When the guns fall silent momentarily as soldiers reload their magazines, we hear the voices of our loved ones crying out as they face this oppression, bidding farewell to those they have lost, and offering words of solace that seem insignificant in the face of their immense grief.
In Gaza, candles are not lit to celebrate the new year but in sorrow, pain, and heartbreak. While the rest of the world rejoices and enjoys peaceful moments with their families and loved ones, Gaza is filled with suffering, pain, and death. What crime have Gaza’s civilians committed?
Refaat Ibrahim
Refaat Ibrahim is a Palestinian writer living in Gaza, where he studied English Language and Literature at the Islamic University. He has been passionate about writing since childhood, and is interested in political, social, economic, and cultural matters concerning his homeland, Palestine. He is also dedicated to amplifying the voice of the Palestinian people living under the weight of Israeli occupation and global neglect. Refaat believes that writing is the way to knowledge, representing the accumulation of keen insight; for him, it is the bridge connecting ideas to people’s minds and emotions to their hearts. He writes with purpose and principle, aiming to open a path for others to perceive things as they truly are. His pen will not stop as long as his heart beats.
Contributions to Pearls and Irritations
Your contribution will fund quality independent comment and analysis in Pearls and Irritations
Contribute
