Dearborn family celebrates Christmas in silence as war in Gaza continues
While hundreds flocked to Campus Martius to celebrate Christmas in Detroit, some spent the holiday at home and in silence as the war in Gaza continues.
For Lexis Zeidan, a Palestinian Christian living in Dearborn, this Christmas was a somber one.
"You know, often I would get really joyful around the holidays. I would say, being a Palestinian Christian, Merry Christmas doesn't feel right to say this year, even happy holidays," Zeidan said.
Because for the first time in living memory, the city of Bethlehem, known as the birthplace of Jesus, was eerily quiet even on his birthday.
"In the hometown of Christmas, this is what Christmas looks like. Children being pulled from under the rubble, displaced families, destroyed homes," Rev. Munther Isaac Evangelical, the pastor at Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem, said on Christmas Eve.
As of Monday night, the Gaza Health Ministry reports there are more than 530 Christians trapped inside the Holy Family Church in Gaza without food and water.
On Christmas, Pope Francis called for a ceasefire in his Christmas message. The message came just days after he described the actions of the Israeli Defense Forces as "terrorism" after two unarmed Palestinian Christians sheltering in the Catholic Parish Church in Gaza were killed by an Israeli sniper.
Zeidan said knowing what is happening back in the Holy Land, where nearly 30,000 Palestinians have been killed, almost half of them children, following the October 7th attack by Hamas, it is impossible for her to carry on with Christmas the way she is used to.
"It's like living in two worlds. I walk out the door, and there are some people celebrating and going about their day like nothing is going on. And then there's me and my family. We wake up, we're looking at our phones and just watching what is happening, the bombs and the displacement of nearly two million people. We are just praying for peace in Palestine," Zeidan said.
It is a sort of peace that Zeidan says hasn't existed, not just since Oct. 7, but over the last 75 years dating back to the displacement of her very own grandparents in 1948.
"My grandparents, they are from Jaffa. They were actually displaced in 1948 during the first Nakba, the catastrophe, which the Zionist movement actually came in and actually displaced 750,000 Palestinians," Zeidan said.
It is a well-documented catastrophe that Lexis says is hard to stomach, given history is repeating itself again. This time, it is Palestinians in Gaza under attack, where the oldest Palestinian-Christian population in the world is on the verge of being wiped out completely.
"There are really only about 800-1000 Palestinians left in Gaza that are at risk of being extinct," Zeidan said.
It is that very fear, among others, that had hundreds of Metro Detroiters joining in on a 100+ car caravan on Christmas Day flooding parts of the city calling for a stop to the war.
"How can anyone celebrate Christmas this year when where Jesus was born, Christmas is cancelled. People need to wake up and start paying attention to what is happening," Bashar Hallak, who led the caravan, told CBS Detroit Monday.
For Zeidan, the only wish she is making this Christmas is one that includes peace and, hopefully, one day, a place to return back home to visit the roots of her ancestors.
"I wish for the Palestinian people to be free and end to the military occupation. I wish they could wake up to the sound of birds and not bombs. I wish that during some time during the distant future, I get to go back my grandparents' land and celebrate the most holy time of the year amongst the land that helped raise my grandparents, my parents and the land that I'm a descendent of," Zeidan said.
As of Monday night, the Gaza Health Ministry reports there are more than 530 Christians trapped inside the Holy Family Church in Gaza.