Christmas lights twinkle in Damascus as Christians remain cautious

DAMASCUS — Sally, 45, hesitated for several days before decorating her home in Damascus for Christmas. Hanging lights on a tree covered in bells, she hoped the year ahead would be good to her, her family and all Christians in Syria. 

Not long before, in the early hours of December 8, she woke to the sound of gunshots near her home on Baghdad Street, in the center of Syria’s capital. It was a celebration, she later learned, “bullets of joy” at the fall of the regime. Bashar al-Assad had “left the country and fled, abandoning the minorities he always claimed to defend,” Sally, a teacher, told Syria Direct.

Despite her joy at the end of “years of the Assad family’s injustice,” trepidation remains, Sally said. “The official media machine planted the idea in our minds for years that the opposition holds a radical Islamist ideology and could restrict us from practicing our rituals or dressing as we like,” she added. 

Still, “the joy of victory is priceless, because freedom is the dream of all Syrians,” she said. 

Many Christians living in Damascus shared the initial moments of joy at Assad’s fall, but over the following days, worry began to creep in, one phrase echoing in conversations behind closed doors: “We don’t know what’s next,” Sandra Khouri, 30, told Syria Direct.

The first days brought “reassuring slogans, but we want the reality to match these slogans,” Khouri, who works at a company in Damascus, said. She still fears the possibility of “hardline, exclusionary Islamist rule.” 

The hope is for “governance based on a constitution that ensures everyone’s rights, and for bright minds from all segments of society to lead state ministries and institutions, based on competence,” Khouri said. Syria has no shortage of “distinguished figures in scientific and practical” fields, she added. 

Khouri has not directly encountered any members of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)—the leading faction among those who took control of Damascus on December 8. She has heard of “good treatment,” and that the new authorities visited “several churches in Damascus, to meet people and reassure them,” she said. 

Christmas decorations hang in a street in Bab Sharqi, an ancient neighborhood in central Damascus, 20/12/2024 (Syria Direct)

“The issue of minorities in Syria is an old one,” Nader Jabali, a Syrian writer and human rights activist living in Paris, told Syria Direct. “It began with colonialism, and was always a tool for control and domination. Colonizers divided themselves into groups protecting the Catholics, the Orthodox or the Druze. Then the French entrenched sectarianism by dividing regions according to minority [populations].”  

The Assad regime “played this game in a poisonous way, for control,” Jabali said. “Assad cultivated an image of a dangerous Sunni bogeyman who would slaughter the rest if it came to power, and that minorities had to stand together behind the regime for protection, particularly after the events with the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1980s,” he added. This strategy “was very successful.” 

Read more: Syrian Christians: Exploited or protected minority?

Decorating indoors

Each year since the Syrian revolution began in March 2011, lights and other Christmas decorations have been hung in areas controlled by the ousted Assad regime, though they were affected by security and economic conditions in the country, including electricity rationing. 

Under new authorities in Damascus—the caretaker government appointed at the behest of Ahmad al-Sharaa (Abu Muhammad al-Jolani), the leader of HTS and the current de facto leader of Syria—streets in the capital are once more lit up for the Christmas season, as Syria Direct observed in neighborhoods such as Bab Touma, Bab Sharqi and al-Qasaa. 

Visitors walk past decorations at the Christmas market at Damascus’ Exhibition City, 20/12/2024 (Syria Direct)

The yearly Christmas market, held in Damascus’ Exhibition City, opened on December 20, and was well-attended. This year, Syrian revolution flags appeared alongside more typical decorations. 

Despite these outward signs, the undercurrent of concern Christian sources in Damascus expressed to Syria Direct is likely informed by a history of violations against minorities in northwestern Syria. HTS changed course in recent years and began returning seized Christian and Druze properties in Idlib in September 2023.  

In Aleppo, which HTS took control of on November 29, this new course continued. The HTS-led Military Operations Department offered assurances to minorities in the city, and few violations took place. Still, a level of unease remains in Damascus, with “the Christmas atmosphere limited to indoor decorations in many churches and homes,” Khouri said. 

Read more: ‘Shades of gray’: Aleppo’s Christians between HTS promises and painful memories

The Alberto Hurtado House, a Jesuit cultural and educational center in the Jaramana neighborhood on the outskirts of Damascus, was one site that kept its decorations indoors this year. The center, which is open to all, provides a library and study space for youth and university students in the area and organizes art workshops, Daniel Atallah, one of its supervisors, told Syria Direct. 

The Alberto House sent a message to its members “to help decorate, and there was a response from all,” Atallah said. “In this diverse community space, everyone worked together to bring joy, in decorating the Christmas tree inside the house, which they consider theirs.” 

Atallah did not downplay the existence of fears among Christians, but noted these sentiments “exist among everyone, not just Christians.” It is important “to not perpetuate these fears, so long as things are going well,” while “monitoring what is happening,” he added. 

“Any change in the region raises fears among Christians, since they have always been the ones to pay the price,” Jamil Diarbakerli, the executive director of the Sweden-based Assyrian Monitor for Human Rights (AMHR), said. He attributed these fears to “the group [HTS] behind Operation Deterring Aggression [being] a radical Islamist group” and “very negative experiences in many areas.”

Assurances in the form of the state

While “the Sunni majority has been subjected to violence and harm, and paid an unparalleled price,” the majority is “still responsible for the issue of minorities, as its rhetoric is what either amplifies or minimizes the problem,” Jabali noted. 

“Reassurances are very important, and we need them,” he added. But “decisive and ultimate assurances will only be achieved when there is a modern, national state with a democratic constitution that upholds citizenship, protects freedoms and establishes institutions separate from religion. At that time, we can forget about religious or ethnic affiliation, and anything called ‘minorities’ will end.”

Diarbakerli rejected the idea of assurances itself, wondering: “Aren’t Christians part of Syrian society? Aren’t these things the most basic human rights in any country?” He is “against giving assurances regarding religious practices and their lives,” holding that “assurances will be in the form of the state we will see later, and be included in the constitution. If it is individuals who gave these assurances, they can withdraw them later on.” 

Concerns persist because “we cannot predict Syria’s future, but they will dissipate when we have a genuine change of government, when we move towards a new Syria and a new constitution and social contract,” Diarbakerli said. Then, “Christians’ fears will fade.” 

On the other hand, it is necessary to “be open to any change in the country, so long as it achieves stability and participatory governance in a manner that guarantees the diversity within society,” Diarbakerli said. 

“Christians are not tied to the Assad regime,” he concluded. “We existed before Assad, and with Assad, and we will remain after him.” 

This report was originally published in Arabic and translated into English by Mateo Nelson.