© Reuters/ Omar Sanadiki
People gather by a Christmas tree near damaged buildings during Christmas eve in al-Hamidiyah neighborhood in the old city of Homs, Syria December 24, 2016.
People gather by a Christmas tree near damaged buildings during Christmas eve in al-Hamidiyah neighborhood in the old city of Homs, Syria December 24, 2016.
On Christmas Day, President Bashar Assad and First Lady Asma Assad paid a symbolic visit to the Our Lady of Saidnaya Monastery and orphanage about 25 km north of Damascus. Footage of the visit, which shows the Assads greeting and embracing the monastery's nuns and children, has since gone viral online.
The Assad family's gesture of support for the country's ancient Christian community has led to questions among social media users about why much of the mainstream Western media continues to berate the country's tolerant secular nationalist government, while tacitly downplaying the radical Islamist beliefs of forces seeking regime change.
Assad's visit to the monastery was just one snapshot amid celebrations that broke out across the country on December 25th as Christians celebrated Christmas, some in defiance of terrorist intimidation and shelling. In the city of Aleppo, much of which had been under terrorist rule for over four years, tens of thousands of Christians publically celebrated the holiday for the first time since jihadist forces arrived in the city in 2012.
Other cities held similarly bright, public celebrations on Christmas Eve and into Christmas Day.
Some social media savants, including prominent independent researchers Maram Susli and Kevork Almassian, also weren't shy in criticizing the hypocrisy and ignorance among much of the Western media, and the effort to portray the Assad government and its international allies as the bad guys in the Syrian conflict.
Syria's Ba'ath Party government, which has ruled the country since the 1960s, formally governs under the principle of secular nationalism and Arab socialism, and has made an effort to account for literally dozens of religious and ethnic groups in Syria, including Christians from seven different denominations. The Syrian constitution guarantees religious freedoms, and the country's state-run educational system mandates religious study in Islam and/or Christianity, by parents' choice.
Syrian Christians are estimated to make up about 10% of the country's population; they have been particularly hard hit in the war that has devastated the country over the last six years, with numerous jihadi groups, including Daesh (ISIL/ISIS) and Nusra Front explicitly targeting Christian minorities for attacks in areas under their control.
Ultimately, Twitter users suggested that Sunday's jubilant celebrations were an important sign - that the jihadist efforts to take over Syria have failed, and that the country's long and brutal war may finally be coming to an end.
Americans in particular are so utterly unaware of history, culture, science, and geography that they know nothing about the rest of the world, and are even, believe it or not, PROUD of their ignorance. There seems to be some sort of twisted value system in this supremely ignorant country which implies that if an American shows the slightest interest in anything outside America, it is somehow unpatriotic, and probably against the teachings of Jesus Christ as well. There is a general belief that the Chosen People of the Bible were not, in fact, the Jews, but Americans. (At least, to be specific, white Americans. Red, yellow and brown Americans could not possibly have been chosen for anything other than singing, dancing, and cleaning up after white people. Oh, and relinquishing their land for the enrichment of white people, American or otherwise.) Syrians, of course, are not white, but some indeterminate shade of taupe, even if they were Christians already and living in marble palaces when white Americans' ancestors were still living in mud huts in Europe and wearing animal skins and praying to Wotan.