The Copts and Christmas

Amidst Egypt's political turmoil and the recent approval of the country's draft constitution, millions of Christians across Egypt are preparing to celebrate Christmas as usual this year under the shadow of Islamist rule.

Egypt's churches have invited all the Copts to attend the celebrations as usual, and Pope Tawadros II, the head of the Coptic Church, has urged all Copts inside and outside Egypt to celebrate Christmas despite a sometimes tense political atmosphere.

Pope Tawadros said that the anniversary of the attacks against the Copts at Christmas time over the past two years in Alexandria and Nagaa Hammadi should not lead to fears during this festive season. He asked the clergy of all churches to celebrate together in order to express Christian joy and strongly encouraged all Copts to attend church on Christmas Eve.

To celebrate Christmas, the St Nicholas Church in Banha has been holding services under the auspices of Bishop Maximus, the Coptic bishop of Banha and Quesna, which have included a daily mass, hymns for the Coptic month of Kiahk and praise of St Nicholas and other saints, as well as exhibitions of the Bible and images of the Holy Family.

Elsewhere, the celebrations have included daily masses given by Bishop Qozman, bishop of North Sinai, Bishop Daniel, bishop of Bishop Bola Monastery, Bishop Daniel, bishop of Maadi, and Bishop Dawoud, bishop of Mansoura.

St Nicholas is the real person behind the legendary character of Father Christmas, or Santa Claus, who traditionally gives children gifts on Christmas Eve. The origins of the story began when a rich man lost all his wealth and became a pauper, his three daughters being led into temptation by the devil in order to help him back to prosperity.

God revealed the man's story to Nicholas, the bishop of the city, who threw a bag of money through the window of the man's house. The man was overjoyed and was able to marry off his eldest daughter. When Nicholas did the same thing again, he was able to marry off his second daughter. The third time, the man wanted to find out the identity of his benefactor, and when he discovered it was Nicholas he knelt at his feet in gratitude.

The church in Banha is the only Coptic church in Egypt named after St Nicholas, and it belonged to the Greek Orthodox sect until Bishop Maximus, the archbishop of Qalioubiya, bought it, the late Pope Shenouda III signing the deed in 1980.

This Christmas, enhanced security measures have been put in place at churches in Egypt, including the installation of additional security barricades and special guards, as well as surveillance cameras and X-ray machines.

Coptic churches will begin mass on Christmas Eve at 7pm, and this will be followed by traditional gift-giving. The services will end at dawn the next day. One Church source told Al-Ahram Weekly that there was no truth in rumours that Christmas celebrations could be cancelled because of the political turmoil or out of fear of sectarian attacks.

The source said that all Christian churches had a variety of programmes planned to celebrate Christmas, including giving children gifts. Many Coptic families have said they will celebrate Christmas in Egypt no matter the circumstances because they believe that festivities in Egypt have a special flavour. Pope Tawadros's decision to celebrate the occasion has added to their enthusiasm.

Monica Mena Morcos, a secondary school student, said that most families were likely to decorate Christmas trees and their homes in order to help forget the tense political situation that has been reigning in Egypt. "People are fed up and want to rejoice," Morcos added.

Mina Magdi, 40, an employee at an oil company, said that he intended to celebrate Christmas "at a resort on the Red Sea with my wife and nine-year-old daughter. I bought a Santa Claus figure for my daughter and some toys with flashing lights."

George Al-Qoms, an engineering student, said that "political tensions will not affect my family's celebrations of Christmas or New Year. It comes once a year, and everyone wants to go to church on this glorious day. We are confident that this will be a day of joy and ask the Lord to give Egypt peace and love and protect it against subversive currents."

Irenie Wagdi declared that "as Copts we do not know fear, but we do not like trouble and tension. I believe Copts will gather at churches this year more than in previous years. We should not be fearful, despite threats by extremists to prevent our celebration of Christmas."

Barbara Al-Qoms Maqar said that "political and other events do not affect the Church and its celebrations because the Church's festivities are spiritual and include prayers and mass. Celebrating the birth of Christ must take place no matter what. It cannot be cancelled."

Vivian Fakhri, an employee in a private-sector company, said that she was overjoyed to be able to celebrate Christmas with her friends and family. Fakhri said that the political events would not affect her celebration of Christmas and the New Year.

Amy Aziz, 29, and the mother of two, said she intended to decorate her home to celebrate Christmas, but that she would be discrete because of fears of lax security on the streets and the incidents that had taken place during the referendum on the constitution.

Vendors have started to sell the latest decorations, and the entrances of hotels, malls and shops have been decorated with Christmas trees. Shops have also been seeing increased sales during the holiday season.

Michael Safwat, a shopworker, said that lasers were the latest decorative fad this year, along with strings of glass decorations and a Santa Claus that talks and tells stories. Several other new products made an appearance this year, including decorative bells and baubles.

Sami Adel, who owns a shop selling Christmas gifts, said that he would like to see as many people as possible buying Christmas decorations. Adel said that sales were down this year, and he hoped that people would set aside their concerns about politics in order to celebrate.

Awni Aziz, a salesman in a clothing shop, said that customers enjoyed looking in the windows because of the Christmas decorations and that many appeared to be more interested in the shop's Christmas tree than in its merchandise.

The Christmas tree tradition dates back to mediaeval times in Germany. The first person to decorate a Christmas tree is said to be St Boniface, who brought Christianity to Germany and asked people to cut down a pine tree as an expression of gratitude for the birth of Christ.

The custom spread and became popular in other countries, with Britain's Queen Victoria encouraging her husband, the German prince Albert, to plant a Christmas tree inside her palace. People began decorating and lighting Christmas trees at the end of the 19th century.

Poinsettias are also a staple of Christmas decorations because of their rich red colour and height. The plant has many branches and a short stem with wide triangular leaves. It blooms in winter at the beginning of December.

By Michael Adel
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg
Assyrian International News Agency

Amin Fakhry Abdel-Nour (1912 – 2012)

Rest in peace

Nasser Sobhy

Amin Fakhry Abdel-Nour, the prominent Copt and Wafdist passed away last week. The Wafd is the national, liberal political party founded by head figures of Egypt’s national movement back in the 1920s and still a strong player on Egypt’s political scene today.
Pope Tawadros II presided over Abdel-Nour’s funeral in the Coptic Orthodox Cathedral of St Mark in Abassiya, Cairo. In addition to the family and friends of the deceased, and leading figures of the Wafd party, a large number of public and political figures were on hand to pay their last respects to the widely-loved and honoured Abdel-Nour.
Present was Fr Rafiq Greiche of the Catholic Church; Hamdeen Sabahi, Amr Moussa—both were presidential contenders in the last elections—and Mohamed Abul-Ghar of the secular People’s Stream; Sayed Badawi and Fouad Badrawi of the Wafd party; Rifaat Said and Nabil Zaky of the leftist Tagammu party; the liberal politicians Amr Hamzawi and Amin Abaza, activists Usama al-Ghazali Harb and George Ishaq; former cabinet members Hassan Massoud, Ahmed Darwish, Adel Abdel-Hamid, and Emad Abu-Ghazi, as well as the prominent film director and activist Khaled Youssef.
Abdel-Nour, who died 100 years old, was the son of Fakhry Abdel-Nour who was among the most prominent figures of the national movement which worked to free Egypt of British occupation in the post-WWI years, and for which purpose he was banished to the island of Malta in 1919 together with the movement’s leader Saad Zaghloul. When he was back home in 1920, he resumed his struggle, this time through the Wafd party which he helped found with Zaghloul in 1919, and which his son Amin described as the stronghold of liberalism and democracy in Egypt.
Egypt finally gained its independence in 1954. The Wafd party was dissolved, as were all other political parties in Egypt in 1952 by order of the then president Gamal Abdel-Nasser. However, when President Anwar al-Sadat allowed the formation of parties in 1970s, the Wafd was resurrected and resumed operation, with Amin Abdel-Nour and later, his son Mounir playing pivotal roles there.
When Amin Abdel-Nour was recently asked his opinion about the current rise of political Islam in Egypt, he gave his by-now famous reply: “Egypt is irrevocably moderate, and its people will never relinquish their moderation and freedom no matter what.”

Eyewitness to a century of Egyptian life
Milad Zaky

Amin Abdel-Nour, who died last week at 100, was a walking national archive who lived through three Egyptian revolutions, eight rulers and countless cabinets. He saw Egypt’s population grow from a mere 12 million to some 83 million, and mingled with heads of State, men of religion, artists, intellectuals and public figures.
Abdel-Nour was born in July 1912 into a prominent Coptic landowner family from the town of Gerga in Upper Egypt. His father was the famous patriot Fakhry Abdel-Nour.
Amin received his schooling at the Jesuits’ school in Cairo, the Collège de la Sainte Famille and, in 1940, married Nina Ghali who was the sister of his close friend Michel Ghali, and was 10 years his junior. Nina remained to the very end the love of his life. Together they had two sons: Fakhry who focused on business, and Mounir who earned a degree in political science and walked in his father’s footsteps to become a prominent politician in his own right.

First meeting since 5th century
Amin Abdel-Nour’s political career spanned years of effort against the British occupation of Egypt, which had begun in 1882 and ended in 1954, and work for a constitution that would establish Egypt as a democracy. He took part in more demonstrations than he could remember, many of them in Cairo and others in his native town of Gerga. In a 1938 demonstration in Gerga he sustained a head injury and had to be moved to Cairo to be hospitalised.
Abdel-Nour had a very important role to play with the Coptic Church. His good relations with the Vatican poised him to mediate between the two Churches for the return of part of the relics of St Mark to Egypt. St Mark had brought Christianity to Egypt and was martyred in Alexandria in the first century. His body was taken to Venice in 828 and there it remains till today. In the 1960s, Pope Kyrillos VI wished to have the relics of St Mark, or part of them, returned back to Egypt. And so it was that Abdel-Nour, accompanied by the Jesuit Père Henri Ayrout, headed to Rome to negotiate the matter with Pope Paul VI. The result was auspicious, and the part of the relics was returned to Egypt in June 1968, where it now lies in the crypt of St Mark’s cathedral in Abassiya.
In 1973, Abdel-Nour was again instrumental in bringing closer the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria and the Roman Catholic Church in the Vatican. Pope Shenouda III went to Rome to meet Pope Paul VI, the first meeting between the two Churches since the great schism of 451AD.
Like his father, Amin Abdel-Nour enjoyed warm, cordial relations with the Muslims of his town. The family home used to host sheikhs to recite Qur’an during the evenings of the Holy month of Ramadan, all through which he used to hold iftar (the sunset breakfast meal) for his townspeople. He made contributions towards building mosques, and helped with the tuition of distinguished pupils in town, Muslim and Christian.

My son, the Minister
Abdel-Nour was famous for his legendary wit and humour. Until the very end he enjoyed a vibrant memory and spoke about minute details of incidents that occurred decades ago.
Yet, according to Watani’s Lucy Awad who interviewed Abdel-Nour earlier this year, his eyes would get misty and his entire body language would betray strong emotion at one particular memory: that of the death of his father Fakhry Abdel-Nour. The senior Abdel-Nour dropped dead while in the middle of a speech he was giving before parliament in December 1942. Amin was among the backbenchers and, to the last days in his life, could never forget how his father fell.
The pride of Abdel-Nour’s life was his son Mounir. The father talked gleefully of Mounir’s political career as secretary-general of the Wafd, as MP and, later, as Minister of Tourism in 2011. He used to boast that Mounir was the only one who could beat him at a game of squash.
When Awad met Abdel-Nour, she was especially impressed at his happiness for having lived to be 100. Yet his lifetime experience led him to insist Egypt was on the wrong path since the 2011 Revolution, since a revolution without a leader was clueless; it was bound to fail.
Amin Abdel-Nour was an exceptional man, hard to come by. He will definitely be missed.

The picture shows Mr Amin Abdel-Nour being honoured by Youssef and Samia Sidhom on the occasion of Watani’s golden Jubilee in December 2008

Watani International
Saturday 29 Dec 2012

Pope Tawadros visits Catholic Churches in Egypt

Pope Tawadros II seized the opportunity of Christmas to visit the heads of the Churches in Egypt that celebrate Christmas on 25 December, to offer his good wishes and respects.

The Pope was accompanied by Bishop of Youth Anba Moussa, Bishop of Shubral-Kheima Anba Morqos, Deputy of the patriarchate Father Sergius, and manager of ecumenical relations at the Coptic Cultural Centre Sobhy Girgis.
The first visit was to the Coptic Catholic Patriarchate where Pope Tawadros met Bishop Kyrillos William, administrator of the Coptic Catholic Church, to wish the Coptic Catholic Church a blessed Christmas. The patriarch, Cardinal Antonius Naguib, was sick and unable to meet the Coptic Orthodox patriarch, so Pope Tawadros paid him a special visit two days later.

Pope Tawadros also visited the Greek Melkite Catholic Church where he offered his good wishes to Pope Gregory III Laham, Patriarch of Antioch and all the East, who keeps a tradition of celebrating Christmas with his congregation in Cairo. The third visit was to the Greek Orthodox Pope Theodore II of Alexandria and all Africa, who thanked Pope Tawadros for his visit, and prayed that his papacy would be blessed, since he had become patriarch “while Egypt is undergoing difficult times”.
Father Rafiq Greiche, the spokesman for the Catholic Churches in Egypt, said that Pope Tawadros’s visit was a source of great happiness and blessing, since it confirmed the love and cordial relations between the Churches in Egypt. “The Late Pope Shenouda III,” Fr Rafiq said, “had been used to make this round of Christmas visits, until his health failed the last three years. We are very happy Pope Tawadros has picked the thread and resumed the visits.” Bishop Kyrillos William said that, even before Pope Tawadros II was chosen as patriarch last November, all the Churches had been invited to pray together with the Coptic Orthodox Church for the Lord to choose a new pope according to His will. “Ever since,” he said, “we feel we are indeed one Church, and that Pope Tawadros is not only the Patriarch of the Coptic Orthodox, but is also the spiritual father of the entire Middle East, in his capacity as head of the largest Christian community there.”

For his part, Pope Tawadros said that compassionate relations have always tied the Churches in Egypt, and expressed his personal love and respect to each of them. He asked them all to join in prayer for Egypt, saying that the nativity of Christ should be a message of love to the entire world.

Watani International
28 December 2012

Salvation Front will continue fight against constitution: Spokesperson

National Salvation Front's official spokesperson plans to discuss the possibility of running in parliamentary elections as one electoral list

Cairo, Wednesday 26 Dec 2012: Hussein Abdel-Ghani, the official spokesperson of National Salvation Front (NSF) stated on Wednesday in exclusive statements to Al-Ahram Arabic news website that the NSF would continue its fight against the constitution “drafted by the Muslim Brotherhood” to either reduce or amend the national charter.

“The fight against the constitution will continue through all the democratic mechanisms, whether through protests, sit-ins and parliamentary elections,” Abdel said, adding that these approaches would work in parallel until Egypt writes a constitution that represents all Egyptians.

The official spokesperson also revealed that the front plans to hold a meeting on Wednesday night to discuss the possibility of running in the parliamentary elections under one electoral list.

Abdel-Ghani added that the NSF also plans to form a committee to coordinate between different parties in order to ensure that the front gets the majority of votes in the upcoming elections.

Opposition groups have argued that the constitution lacks national consensus, describing the charter as "unrepresentative."

Drafted by an Islamist-led Constituent Assembly that saw walkouts by church representatives, liberals, leftists and others, the constitution was upheld on late Wednesday after a referendum that saw 32 per cent of voter turnout.
Ahram Online

egyptindependent.com- National Salvation Front: No dialogue with Morsy unless he amends Constitution

U S State Dept. on Egyptian Constitution

Sheikh of Al-Azhar Congratulates Christians On Christmas

Cairo, December 26 2012: Al-Azhar Grand Sheikh Dr. Ahmed el-Tayyeb congratulated on Tuesday 25/12/2012 Christians on the advent of Christmas.
In a cable on Tuesday, he expressed hope that this would be a good chance to promote "love and mercy" among Egyptians, regardless of their orientations and beliefs.
Moreover, Mufti of the Republic Ali Gomaa greeted on Tuesday 25/12/2012 Pope Tawadros II of Alexandria and Patriarch of Saint Mark Diocese on the advent of Christmas.
Gomaa also sent greeting cables to Archbishop of the Evangelical Church Safwat el-Bayadi and Patriarch of the Coptic Catholic Church Antonios Naguib wishing them a merry Christmas.

The Vatican's ambassador in Cairo received a similar cable from the mufti.
Gomaa hoped the holidays would be a good chance to promote peace on earth and to unite Egyptians.

Egypt State Information Service

Egypt President Morsi puts constitution into effect

President Morsi enacts the controversial constitution after the referendum's official results were released

Cairo,, Wednesday 26 Dec 2012: Egypt President Mohamed Morsi signed an executive order late on Tuesday enacting Egypt's new constitution.
Yasser Ali, presidential office spokesperson, confirms that Morsi signed the executive order hours after the Supreme Electoral Commission announced the the draft charter had been endorsed by 63.8 of voters in this month's referendum.
Morsi's leftist, liberal, secularist and Christian opponents had taken to the streets to block what they argue was a move to ram through a charter that would dangerously mix politics and religion.
The president, however, argues that the new constitution offers sufficient protection for minorities and adopting it quickly is necessary to end two years of turmoil and political uncertainty that he says wrecked the economy.
Egypt's new constitution has been drafted by a Constituent Assembly whose non-Islamist members, including church representatives, liberals, leftists and others, dropped out of in protest against what was frequently described as "Islamist domination."

Ahram Online

Egypt Approves Disputed Draft Constitution

Official results are announced; 63.8 per cent said 'Yes'

Cairo, December 25, 2012: Egypt's new constitution, drafted by Islamist supporters of President Mohamed Morsi, has been approved by 63.8 percent of voters in a two-round referendum. The final official turnout was 32.9 percent of the country's 52 million eligible voters.