The Trappings of Christmas

Sunday, December 21, 2008

Today is the 4th Sunday in Advent, the last Sunday before Christmas. I was looking forward to church today, hoping to be a part of the celebration of the season with the people of Haiti. For obvious reasons, a lot of the glitz and commercialism that colors so much of our celebrations in the States is absence here. In Haiti, Christmas, we are told, is specifically a time for family. If there is any extra money, it is spent on fixing up the house or home at the year’s end. A truly bountiful Christmas allows for a good meal and possibly small gifts. However most families don’t have the luxury for a celebration.

The drive to church this Sunday morning took us through streets bustling with urban life. We turned to the outskirts of City Solei where green pasture and marshland stretch between settlements. The road passed a large open field filled with thick pasture grass. Several donkeys, loosely lassoed to trees nearby were munching blades of grass lazily in the morning sun; goats picked their way through the green. In the center of this field nestled in the city was a church. The building was in the shape of a large, simple rectangle. Its floor was a cement slab, the walls and ceiling constructed out of thin wooden beams and tin panels. Inside were benches filled with people, chanting out the phrases from the Psalms they were learning in Sunday school. Silk flowers hung from the ceiling splashing a bit of color on the grey interior, and a single table sat at the font of the church covered by a white tablecloth.

I was glad to be there this morning. I find the simplicity of the City Solei churches deeply spiritual. I appreciate the lack of electricity, lack of amplified voice over the people. The air that stirred was provided only by the wind, free to come rustling in the windows. However no special ornaments or decorations were placed in the church to demarcate it from any other Sunday. No candles, no holly, no evergreen, no cross, no nativity. I felt myself secretly yearning for a little symbol of the season. I merely had to learn to look for them differently.

As I had my head bowed during prayers, I noticed spots of light filtering through holes in the tin roof. Pinpoint nail holes or rusted areas in the worn tin above our heads allowed for sunbeams to sneak into the shaded space. The floor was decorated with many spots of light, nature’s own string of Christmas lights creating a Cosmo sphere on the earth and cement floor. I meditated on these spots of light, a familiar symbol of Christmas for me strung in a different place. No electricity was needed, no tree. Just a few tiny gaps in the tin to let the sun filter through and dance light in shaded spaces.

The congregants were dressed simply, but in their Sunday best. The women wore pieces of lace over their heads, the little girl’s satin dresses looking far from new after many a Sunday walking over dusty roads. During the offering, the children came forth, knelt down in front of the table and smiled at us before putting their coins in the dish.

Francois led the congregation in song. The music started slowly, prayerfully, almost mournfully, but picked up tempo in time. The last hymn carried a fast Caribbean beat driven by a single drum. Patrick and I smiled at each other when we spotted the oldest member of the congregation, a little hunched woman sitting on the isle. She sang, face raised, eyes closed, a look of joy spread across her wrinkled face, and her shoulders shimmied to the beat.

My sweet Patrick gave the Christmas message. He spoke of the weeks of advent and what they represented: hope, peace, love and joy. He spoke of the good news given by the Angel Gabriel: that Jesus would be born among the people rather than in the palace of kings. He described the historic scene of Jesus’s birth, the simplicity of the accommodations. Historically we know Mary and Joseph to have been peasants who likely had little education. Jesus was born in a stable, with animals as his nursemaids and straw for a pillow. Looking around the sacred space we found ourselves in this morning, Patrick’s descriptions of the nativity seemed to be illustrated in the very walls that rose around us, by the surrounding field with animals grazing outside the door. I had to blink back tears when he talked about the meaning of the season, the importance of coming together in the spirit of advent. His message was profound in its simplicity and he connected it with the very place, the very situation we found ourselves in. The message of Christmas here is that God lives among all people of all backgrounds, of all social status, of all dogma, and sent his son to be born in a place much like City Solei. In such a profound symbol of love, God speaks that all people have value, that God exists in all places. But especially among the poor, the spirit moves, and is born.

Patrick offered the people the gifts of the advent that are renewed with every new season. Peace that comes through justice, Love of family, friends and of our fellow brothers and sisters of this human race, Joy in the gift of life, and Hope that needs will be met, opportunities will open, suffering will end so that all people may live together in an advent that knows no season, has no calendar date, but that defines every day of our lives.

This church did something different that the others we’ve visited. The pastor of the church, toward the end of the service, introduced the congregation to us. One by one, the congregants came up to shake our hand or touch cheeks. It was beautiful. After a day yesterday of fighting feelings of being quite alone in a foreign place, the intimate introduction to this community was overwhelmingly beautiful. At the end of the service, those who hadn’t been formally introduced came up anyway, bringing their children who giggled as they held out their hands for a shake. We were the recipients of a hundred hands and bright smiles, gifts of friendship and welcome.

Today I moved past my need of my own traditional symbols of faith, and found them in everything surrounding me. Such observations brought a Christmas story from a time 2000 years ago into the present. A stained glass picture of a biblical story is instead replaced by a living, moving scene of palm trees, blue sky, bright sun and green grass surrounding the church. Candles aren’t needed when spots of light create their own dancing light through holes in the tin. Instead of a manger scene, we see the Christ child in the infant carried in by his mother, nestled in the pews among the community in which he was born. A cross isn’t needed to symbolize ever-living faith… it radiates from the eyes of the people, raises up in their voices, and is palpable through the holding of hands and smiles shared. As Patrick mentioned in his sermon, under this simple building in the middle of the field, the church was filled only with the spirit of God who rode in on the wind, who rose up through song in one unified voice, who beamed from the faces of young and old that sat together shoulder-to-shoulder in the pews. We prayed in a field where animals lazily grazed, where the wind stirred the air, where people came together. This morning the spirit of advent saturated every face, every detail in the simplicity of the church we prayed in. This morning gave us a Christmas moment unlike any other we’ve had.

Tonight, we just returned from another radio show. Questions volleyed to us asked what Haiti can hope for with the election of a new American president, what our impressions are of the country and how they differ from what we expected or had heard prior to coming. Patrick was asked to give an abbreviated form of his Christmas message, and he did so beautifully. We were then asked to share our own hopes for the Haitian people over the radio waves. As always, we felt humbled as we tried to represent not only ourselves, but the country, the people we come from. We were reminded of our responsibility to make people aware, to challenge systems of oppression within our own country that discriminates through racism and exclusionism, through economic sanctions and closed borders. The Haitian people are looking to us, as Americans, to open our eyes to their plight, to reach out in friendship and hear their story. They look to us for hope in the future, a hope in finally doing things differently.

Driving home after the radio show, darkness had once-again fallen. I love the city after the sun goes down, the energy that continues to flow regardless of night. And tonight, we were surprised to see Christmas lights wrapping themselves around many a building, music pulsating through churches and night clubs passed.

After struggling with being able to share in the traditions of our family’s Christmas, today we were happily filled with a tropical spirit of the holidays… through the simplicity of faith rising up above the poverty in City Solei, intertwined in the conversation about hope over the radio waves, and in the vibrancy of life after dark accented with the twinkling of lights.

Merry Christmas from Haiti. May you also find your own Christmas joy in the unexpected, in the simplest of moments. May you fall in love with the interconnectivity of life, in the energy that moves us. May you be wrapped in the peace of the spirit, on the earth that you walk on, the air that you breath. May you recognize the Christ child in the faces of all you meet, and may you turn your conversations and meditations to the hope in the future for all people.