Christmas in Lebanon: No Festival of Hope

Christmas in Lebanon: Many Christians have to forego gifts, pastries and other traditions. The country has had an economic crisis firmly in its grip for two years. There is hardly any confidence left.

Quickly add a little salt to the salad bowl and the meal is ready. Hoda Maalouf cooked all morning. She has to feed eleven people – with ingredients that cost as little as possible. Because prices in Lebanon are rising every day.

She needs at least three million Lebanese pounds a month for food, says Maalouf, which is the equivalent of around 1,758 euros (As of: 23.12.2021). A lot of money, not just for them: “We Lebanese don’t know how to survive.”

Back to the mother’s apartment

Maalouf puts a large pot of rice on the small living room table, plus a plastic bowl with small pieces of potato in a tomato sauce. To save money, the 50-year-old moved back into her mother’s apartment with her husband and five sons.

Her sister and her two daughters have been living there for a long time. Eleven now share three tiny rooms. Nevertheless, there is not enough money even for Christmas for meat or even for a small toy car. Maalouf’s youngest son wrote that on his wish list.

But there will be no gifts. They only put up an old tree – so that the children would know that it is Christmas. Everything else that they would have done earlier for Christmas, they no longer did.

Pessimistic self-assessment

Most people in Lebanon are like Maalouf and her family. According to a poll by the polling institute Gallup, more than half of Lebanese people describe their living situation as “very difficult”.

The country has been in a serious economic and financial crisis for a good two years. The Lebanese pound is in freefall and many people have lost their jobs. Maalouf’s husband works as a taxi driver, but hardly earns anything – because of the high gasoline prices.

You try to give the children hope, says Maalouf, tell them: “If God wills, this time will pass.” But there is also the memory of her own childhood – Maalouf was born during the Civil War. At the time, people said that things would definitely get better in a year or two. “But the time now is more difficult than it was then.”

The family finds some comfort in church. Once a month they get a food package there. There is no help from the state because it is as good as bankrupt.

Lack of electricity as everyday life

Ramez Tamotai also picks up a few kilos of rice, sugar or oil every few weeks. Grief is written on the face of the 75-year-old family man. All of his savings are gone, he says, and now he has “nothing, nothing at all”.

Tamotai has not been able to pay the electricity and water bills for a while. There is hardly any electricity left anyway: sometimes two, sometimes four hours a day. Only then can he and his wife cook something for their eight-year-old daughter.

The chain of lights on the plastic Christmas tree in the living room stays dark this year, it is cold in the family’s apartment. They could even no longer buy winter clothing – too expensive given the steep rise in prices.

Tamotai prays that none of them will get sick. He is pretty much alone with his wife and daughter Mira: all of his relatives have already left Lebanon. And little Mira asks the reporter after the interview: “Can you take me to Germany, please?”