’Tis the season for celebrating the birth of Christ, gathering with family and friends, sharing and making memories, and giving and receiving gifts. Importantly, ’tis also the season when the stereos in our cars roll out the Christmas music, which you know I love. The first time I hear “Wonderful Christmastime” by Paul McCartney or “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)” by John Lennon and Yoko Ono is typically when I realize how much I still have to do before December 25. But at this time of year, there’s one particular Christmas classic I always look forward to hearing, and that’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” by Band Aid. It’s an ’80s gem, as is evidenced by the healthy use of synthesizers, but this is also a song that requires a lot of unpacking. So, let’s begin.

Band Aid was a supergroup formed by two British musicians: Bob Geldof, most famous as the lead singer of the Boomtown Rats, and Midge Ure, frontman for the lesser-known Ultravox. The band was put together for a very specific purpose, which was to bring attention to and raise money to combat the great famine that plagued Ethiopia from 1983 to 1985. In essence, Geldof and Ure were pioneers in the realm of musical charity; the recording of “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” and its subsequent international success—both in achieving considerable airplay and generating funds—gave rise to Live Aid, another Geldof project, which in turn has spawned concerts such as Farm Aid, the Concert for New York City (after 9/11), and Hand in Hand: A Benefit for Hurricane Relief (after Hurricanes Harvey and Irma). Before Band Aid, there were only a handful of such efforts, including the Concert for Bangladesh, organized by George Harrison and Ravi Shankar. But I digress.

Thinking about “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” as a charity song recorded by English and Irish artists in response to famine on another continent makes me think of Goal III—a social awareness that impels to action. Clearly, the organizers were aware of an issue that needed addressing, and they and others then employed their talents to help others. That said, in many ways, Band Aid missed the mark. Though intentions were pure, the lyrics of the song demonstrate that maybe Geldof’s social awareness was not fully formed. After all, the production of the song was rushed in order to release the single by December 25, even though Christmas in Ethiopia is celebrated on January 7. As it turns out, no one out of Ethiopia’s roughly 60% Christian population would have known it was Christmas on December 25 because, in their culture, it wasn’t.

But the lack of understanding doesn’t stop there. Some of the lyrics seem to display significant knowledge gaps about Ethiopia and Africa in general. Here are a few for the sake of illustration:

There’s a world outside your window,

And it’s a world of dread and fear,

Where the only water flowing

Is the bitter sting of tears.

(and moments later...)

Where nothing ever grows, 

No rain nor rivers flow. 

Clearly, there’s more water in Africa than “the bitter sting of tears.” There’s a large river in Africa that many have heard of called the Nile. It’s the longest river in the world. And while there were four provinces of Ethiopia that recorded record-low rainfall for several years in the 1980s, the famine was as much, if not more, attributable to clashes between a tenuous military junta in control of the country and several insurgencies. More on that in a minute.

Another favorite pair of misconceptions the song offers comes with this line:

And there won’t be snow in Africa this Christmas time.

The only gift they’ll get this year is life. 

It may be true that there would be no snow in Ethiopia specifically, but to suggest that there would be none in Africa was ridiculous. Mount Kilimanjaro is snow-capped year-round, and it even boasts glaciers. The second part of this line refers to gift-giving because this is a Christmas song, after all. However, it’s worth noting that gift-giving is not a part of the Ethiopian Christmas tradition. There is no Santa Claus figure, and the primary focus of the holiday—again, celebrated on January 7—is the birth of Jesus. The celebration takes the form of family meals following a 43-day fast and a traditional game called “ganna” that resembles field hockey. There’s no guy in a red suit coming down the chimney, and no one is buying a Visa gift card for a relative who is hard to shop for.

To put a bow on it, the song looks at Ethiopia, and really all of Africa, through a very Western lens. It could even be described as a paternalistic view of post-colonial Africa. And then, there’s the kicker. It was U2’s Bono, who has gone on to raise a lot of money for causes in Africa, who sings the cringiest line:

Well tonight thank God it’s them instead of you.

Whoa. Just, whoa.

Back to the tenuous junta and various insurrections part of Ethiopia’s history. It has been reported that some of the money raised may not have gone to famine relief at all but rather to fund the very conflict that was causing the famine. Without much research, the $9 million raised by Band Aid was given to several aid agencies, and according to some reports, as little as 5% of that money made it to the people it was intended to help. If there’s a “bitter sting of tears,” this is the cause.

So, what do we do about this song now? Are we supposed to hate it? Did it do any good? One can make the argument that it may have, despite its many misconceptions. After all, it did raise a good bit of awareness about the plight of others, and it is clear that there was a true desire to help. It was also critical in cementing the future of charity songs and charity concerts that have done good in so many other circumstances. And it’s a catchy piece of nostalgia.

That said, I think about the song differently now every time I hear it. This has been true for a while, but it has become even more true since I have been a Sacred Heart educator. To me, this is a song that speaks of the importance of Goal III and, furthermore, the importance of truly understanding how to live Goal III. Were Bob Geldof and Midge Ure (and Bono, Duran Duran’s Simon LeBon, Sting, Phil Collins, and many others) aware that there were people suffering who needed help? Yes. But were they truly “socially aware?” Not at all. Goal III calls us to a social awareness that isn’t built upon misconceptions, vague understandings, and a lack of familiarity with facts and circumstances. Goal III requires us to dig deep to develop that social awareness, and it demands that before we are impelled to act, we do our homework on how it is that we can actually help those we want to help.

I like to think of Goal III as the “head, heart, and hands” Goal; it starts with the acquisition of knowledge (head), which leads to the development of empathy (heart) and culminates in the action of service (hands). In other words, the order of these three components of Goal III is really important. Empathy without knowledge makes meaningful and impactful action harder to achieve. The challenge for Band Aid was that while they were full of “heart” and had ready “hands,” they needed to do a lot more than scratch the surface of the “head” component, upon which the others rely.

I think about this a lot in the context of our society. The concepts of service and philanthropy in the United States are alive and well, but too often, we lose sight of why we are logging those service hours or writing those checks. Social awareness—and real social awareness built upon a desire to thoroughly understand the circumstances of others—needs to be the backbone of service to those who need us. “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” offers a great opportunity to reflect on Goal III and what it calls us to do.

I’ll conclude with this wonderful and uplifting line from the song, delivered by Boy George:

And in our world of plenty,

we can spread a smile of joy.

Throw your arms around the world

at Christmas time. 

I hope your holidays are filled with smiles of joy, and I hope that you have many opportunities to throw your arms around those whom you love and around those who need your love. Merry Christmas!