Genna, the Coptic Christmas
Every year, at the beginning of January, tens of thousands of faithful come on pilgrimage to a small town in the Amhara region, in the heart of the Ethiopian plateau, to celebrate Christmas. But this is a different Christmas from that we are used to, in an area of Africa where Christianity has existed for centuries and, for centuries, has kept its traditions alive.
The sunlight, still low on the horizon, begins to draw the contours of the Ethiopian plateau’s flat peaks. The pilgrims lying on the ground and sleeping, form an uninterrupted and disordered layer of bodies. Someone, in his half-sleep, opens his eyes lazily to close them again turning around in his own blanket. The figure of an elderly woman stands out from the crowd. She is sitting on the floor, almost completely wrapped in a few layers of white canvas. Only her face and hands are visible. The latter intertwined with each other while resting on the knees. Her gaze is lost in the void, as if she were looking without seeing, as if she were mentally reliving the events of the last night. There is a pungent smell of burning wood in the air: someone not far away must have lit a fire to prepare the first coffee of the day.
For many of the pilgrims this is the last day of celebrations. Today they will have to collect their belonging and undertake the return journey. For some it will be short. For others a little longer. However, each of them will bring home the memory of this journey, a journey that begins in the places of daily life on the plateau, crosses its heart along a path made of scarcely busy roads that and that alternates crowded villages with isolated farms , until reaching, in the days of the celebration of Christmas, the destination of the pilgrimage: Lalibela, the African Jerusalem.
Peasant life in the highlands of the Amhara region is marked by work in the fields, plowing with the help of the precious ox, sowing, harvesting. Strenuous job, where every member of the family, from the youngest to the oldest, has a role. The prevailing landscape is that of a land with low vegetation, surrounded by the characteristic flattened peaks of the Amba, which names are sadly known to the Italians from few generations ago due to bloody battles dating back to the colonial era.
The villages are an authentic swarm of people. People who gather in the open-air markets, who relax in the bars, some of which are made from improvised structures of tin panels or containers, with the brand of the most commercial drinks hand-painted. Some invent and manufacture objects from scratch, others recycle jerry cans and plastic bottles to collect water from common wells.
Children come and go from school, hand in hand, in endless processions along the roadsides, wearing their uniforms whose colors are severely tested by the sun. Some play in the street, dance or perform prodigious stunts.
The elders represent the knowledge and the wisdom. They dress in the traditional way, scarcely attracted by the “western” style to which the new generations instead look.
And then there is the religious side.
Several religions coexist peacefully within the borders of present-day Ethiopia, but, in Amhara, the prevalent cult is that of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. Unlike many other African countries, where Christianity was imported and imposed during the colonial era, Ethiopia adopted the Christian faith as a state religion already in the fourth century, at the height of the Axumite empire. From that moment on, through a succession of events and in a state of isolation from the rest of the world, it developed its own version.
The holy city of Lalibela, now UNESCO World Heritage Site, is probably one of the most striking and characteristic results of this evolution. The myth, in accordance with the opinion of some scholars, places its foundation in the final 12th century at the behest of King Gebre Mequel Lalibela who, due to the Islamic occupation of Jerusalem in 1187, ordered the construction of the city as his capital, with the aim of offering his people a new destination for pilgrimage. It is in fact according to the layout of the sacred places in Jerusalem that the plan of its monolithic churches carved into the rock develops, with its underground passages, its bas-reliefs and frescoes. This is the place where, every year, tens of thousands of faithful from all over the country converge to celebrate Christmas.
The architectural complex is unique in the world. Unlike other places of worship, generally built to extend in height and therefore stretch towards the sky, the churches of Lalibela are literally carved into the rocky soil. They are therefore hypogeal. Everything seems impregnated with a mystical sacredness: the rock carved to form doors and pillars is kissed respectfully; the ground of the churches cannot be walked on except barefoot; the water that flows from the walls and accumulates in cisterns is meticulously collected, stored or used for ablutions and baptisms.
The anthropological scenario is extraordinary and offers the visitor a multisensory experience. Pilgrims wrapped in their shamma, the traditional white cotton tunic, are busy cooking, eating, drinking and praying in their camps. The Debteras, Orthodox priests, wear colorful clothes and move in procession. The hypnotic rhythm of their songs, accompanied by the rattles of the sistrums, marks the rhythm of day and night. Lighted candles, fumes, smells: all this is Gena, the Coptic Christmas celebrated on January 7 of the Gregorian calendar.
On the last night of the celebrations, immersed in the crowd that flowed with slow inertia towards the point where the priests performed the ceremonial and sang the characteristic songs, I remember that I let myself be carried by the flow of people, skirting one of the walls of a church. I was trying my best to glimpse, hidden by the silhouettes ahead of me, the scene of the ceremony, advancing as I could with uncertain steps when I lost my balance for a fraction of a second as I stepped on an object protruding in the ground. I then tried to regain stability by balancing the weight, at first without caring too much about what I was stepping on, until, more by instinct than out of curiosity, I looked down to realize that I was actually stepping on someone’s foot. My eyes quickly scanned the tiny body of the person I was involuntarily annoying until I met the gaze of an elderly man sitting along the wall, staring at me with a curious expression. Despite having forced him to bear part of my weight for a few seconds, he had apparently not even thought about complaining. He had limited himself to waiting patiently for me to continue on my awkward path and remove the inconvenience imposed on him. Suddenly struck with remorse, I tried to stammer out an apology in several languages that he couldn’t have possibly known, as I walked slowly pushed by the people behind me. The old man followed me with his eyes until, probably sensing my awkward attempt at apology, he smiled at me.
I have never been able to explain the reason of such a "patient" attitude, but over time, reflecting on the episode, I wanted to think that, in the end, that man embodies the experience of the entire journey in his person. A journey in a region whose history dates back to ancient times, which faces current problems with calm patience and which, to those who want to discover it and get to know it even a little, smiles kindly.