Woman’s Brilliant Christmas Card Debunks Myths About Refugees

After a divisive election season, the holidays are finally here and people are creating clever Christmas cards to inject optimism into people’s lives. But a 33-year-old psychotherapist didn’t want to shy away from current events — so she addressed them head on in her 2016 Christmas card.

Whitney Roberts Logan told Your Daily Dish that she felt disheartened by the anti-refugee and the anti-immigrant sentiment during the election, which is why she added a special message to the Christmas card with her husband and child.

“This Christmas season, we would like to remind everyone that Jesus was a Middle Eastern Refugee,” the message read.

As someone who studied religion in college, this message had a special meaning for Roberts Logan.

“I created the card because I wanted to remind Christians – specifically – of this part of the Christmas story,” she wrote to Your Daily Dish. “Shortly after Jesus was born, he and his parents fled to Egypt to escape from King Herod, who wanted to kill him. If we say we love God, and he says ‘whatever you do unto the least of these, you do unto me’ (paraphrase), then we have a pretty clear spiritual directive when it comes to caring for those who would seek refuge.”

She shared her card with Pantsuit Nation — the “secret” Facebook page for Hillary Clinton supporters — before sharing it on her Facebook page. In both cases, the card went viral.

“I couldn’t bring myself to say something like, ‘Wishing you and yours a blessed season and a happy new year!'” she told Refinery29. “I thought it would be insincere and out of touch and pretty disconnected from the actual message in the Christmas story itself.”

With the recent situation of refugees in Aleppo, Roberts Logan hopes that her card will create some awareness about this.

“As far as the reaction to the card goes, I am grateful to be able to shine a light on the crisis in Aleppo, and hope that many people will feel inspired to donate to relief organizations assisting refugees now,” she wrote to Your Daily Dish.