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For some Muslim families in Mass., Globe Santa could help make Christmas a healing tradition
“The gifts from [Globe] Santa would help us to share the joy of the season and create special memories together.”
Several Globe Santa letters this holiday season captured the experiences of Muslim refugees hoping to adopt Christmas as an ongoing family tradition.
Celebrating the Christian holiday for these letter-writing families would not only help them adjust to their new American reality. It would help heal the wounds left by conflict back in their home countries.
“We want to create [a] warm and festive atmosphere for our children who look forward to [playing] and [engaging] with their fellow Christian friends and families,” one Muslim mom in a Boston suburb wrote. “The gifts from [Globe] Santa would help us to share the joy of the season and create special memories together.”
Muslim refugees settling in Massachusetts are making a new home in a state with a robust Islamic population. The Greater Boston area is home to roughly 50 mosques, schools, and community organizations with Islamic affiliations, according to Harvard University’s Pluralism Project. This includes New England’s largest mosque, the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center in Roxbury.
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Migrants from Muslim countries have made up a large share of recent arrivals in the state. Historically, Muslim immigrants settling in Boston mostly came from countries like Lebanon and Syria, but in recent years, many newcomers have come from Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
In 2022, Afghans constituted the state’s largest share of humanitarian parolees, according to a report by Refugees in Towns, which is housed in The Fletcher School at Tufts University. Humanitarian parole gives asylum seekers entry due to an urgent crisis, such as the United States’ withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan in late 2021. It doesn’t offer a path to citizenship.
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Included in the group of recent Afghan refugees is one mom, who explained in a Globe Santa letter that she moved to the area two years ago when her living situation became too dangerous. She said she worked for non-governmental organizations, or NGOs, and human rights causes for at least a decade, but had to leave her country behind.
“Afghanistan is not a place for educated women like me to live,” she wrote. “We came here so my family could be safe.”
The mom, whose family is Muslim, said her four children had never heard of Christmas until they arrived in Massachusetts.
“My children quickly learned that the other children were all getting gifts from Santa but they did not,” the mom wrote.
The Afghan mother wants to observe the Christmas tradition, but said she cannot afford to right now.
“My children have had a very hard life in many ways and [I] just want to make them happy,” she wrote. “Please bring them some Santa magic.”
The suburban mom, who didn’t mention her home country in her letter, said that Christmas highlights some of the key values of her Muslim faith. But without Globe Santa’s help, incorporating the holiday into their family traditions might not be possible.
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“As a Muslim family, we cherish the spirit of togetherness and joy during the holiday season,” she wrote. “However, this past year we are still in [a] challenging situation, and financial hardship is making it [especially] hard to celebrate the way we would like.”
Globe Santa requests this holiday season also came from families fleeing countries with considerable Christian communities in the Middle East, including Lebanon.
Although Lebanon has one of the highest shares of Christians in Middle Eastern countries, the population has declined in recent decades. The religious persecution of Lebanese Christians during the country’s civil war in the ‘70s and ‘80s pushed many of them to other countries, and the recent Israel-Hezbollah conflict has forced many countrymen, regardless of faith, to flee elsewhere.
The last time Lebanon conducted a federal census in 1932, it estimated that more than half of the nation was Christian. But Statistics Lebanon, an independent research group, found that at least 69 percent of Lebanon practiced Islam.
Life in the US hasn’t been easy, one Lebanese mother wrote to Globe Santa.
She said her family has moved 12 times because their savings are “blocked in the banks” back in Lebanon. They are now living in a shelter as the mom studies, builds her credit score, and prepares for employment. Providing her three children with Christmas gifts has become an unfortunate afterthought as she searches for stable housing.
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“My children, who are US citizens, have been incredibly brave and resilient throughout these hardships, but they also faced instability,” she wrote. “They missed out on the happiness and joy last year after everything we’ve been through.”
This year, the mom wants to give them a piece of happiness back.
“With the holiday season approaching, I kindly ask and deeply appreciate any help in bringing joy to their lives,” she wrote.
For 69 years Globe Santa, a program of the Boston Globe Foundation, has provided gifts to children in need at holiday time. Please consider giving by phone, mail, or online at globesanta.org.
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