Next [Informal Essay]

TCK Column - Christmas Time

Christmas in Ukraine

--Daniel Miller--

Christmas in Ukraine is a relatively small affair when you compare it to America. In Ukraine they celebrate Christmas on Jan. 7th, so if you think about it, they have Christmas almost a year earlier! A lot of people celebrate New Years instead of Christmas, or maybe they celebrate Saint Nicholas day (Dec. 19th). This means that they take Christmas off (it’s one of the few times a year when the churches are attended), but they give gifts on one of the other days. Ukrainians are notorious (although not as much as Russians) for taking as much time off of work as possible. (It’s the birthday of the president’s third cousin eight times removed!! YAY!!! Let’s take the day off!). But I depart from my subject. In Ukraine they traditionally have twelve dishes that they have to prepare for Christmas Eve dinner (called The Holy Night). One of them is called kutya, rather nasty stuff in my opinion, all buckwheat and raisins. That is the main dish. The others are: three meat dishes often served with potatoes, a bread dish, four salads, two kinds of fish, and a soup. Kutya, however, is the most important one. The Christmas greeting is: “Христос народився” [Christos narodivs’ya], meaning “Christ is born.”

 

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Remember the Prisoners

Cara Anderson, Cote d'Ivoire.

Christmas might come but once a year to those of us who are free, but to the prisoners here in West Africa it comes rarely—if ever. One Christmas our family decided to change that. It started when one of our Christian brothers—M. Yeboua—was put in prison under false accusations. My father made it a point to visit him regularly and began a relationship with the prison warden. As such, when we decided as a family to give the prisoners a meal, the warden gave his hearty permission.
The Ivorian government only provides one small serving of gruel per day per prisoner. Many prisoners die from malnutrition and their weakened state. So a few weeks after Christmas (we couldn’t collect enough beef to feed the 260 prisoners on Christmas Day) a group of ladies from the church helped prepare the vegetable/meat rice and every single prisoner received a filling meal.
The special thing about that Christmas was not just the fact that the prisoners were able to eat a good meal, but that it opened many doors for ministry. The church started by M. Yeboua there has grown; we have received the Muslim warden’s full permission to teach about our Lord Jesus Christ and health; women from the church led a service. While the Christmas meal was not the single cause, God used it to open the prisoners’ hearts and remind them that they are not forgotten. And that is what made it a most special Christmas.

 

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Christmas in the midst of “remont”
Heather Ann Wicker, Russia.

My family moved in December of 2001 to Ulan Ude from Krasnayarsk, a distance of about 3000 km (1500 miles) via car in -30 degree Celsius (-22F) weather. God bless four wheel drive and not knowing any better. (just kidding; it’s only all you warm climate people who think it’s weird).That was an awesome experience, but what was even more cool was the Christmas we had that year. We moved into our gutted apartment and set up house in the master bedroom while major dust-creating, noise-wrecking, concrete-demolishing renovations (“remont” in Russian) went on in the rest of the place. So there we were in the back room with most of us sleeping on the floor, setting up our little 3-foot plastic Christmas tree and going on our annual family Christmas shopping trip in a strange city. We all sat around the tree the night before Christmas Eve Day after each opening a present and spontaneously decided to have Christmas the next day rather than the 25th just because we wanted to! The next day we opened presents, helped Mommy prepare the Christmas meal, had a two hour rest/nap time in the afternoon and played games. We didn’t go anywhere. We didn’t have any company. We had no decorating schemes to worry about. I don’t remember what the presents were (except the memorable tap-dancing, necessary-for-the-dust-everywhere, hard-bottomed slippers). It was probably the simplest Christmas my family had. And yes, it was the best one ever!