Chuukese Christmas 2007

Monday December 24, 2007

8:16 AM

It seems that I have been waiting for Christmas to come for a long time now. Perhaps even since September have I been begging our community to let me play Christmas music while we hang out. Christmas music is some of the most under utilized music we have. There is so much of it, and so many great songs, yet we are only allowed to listen to it for a period of time lasting from Thanksgiving to New Year’s. It seems that anyone who is anyone in music needs to have a Christmas album before anyone can take ‘em seriously. And so I for one am and advocate of Christmas in June, and August and March, and any other time you want to feel in the Christmas spirit. Besides, being here in Micronesia, its not like the weather will tell you the time for Christmas has come. It’s pretty much the same all year round, and so why not celebrate Christmas all year round. I would even go as far to say, leave the Christmas tree up year round too. Last Christmas, Lincoln really wanted to buy a fake plastic tree with shining lights built in from the store. It was originally about $100 or so. I thought it might be straying off to far from the Living Simply component of being a Jesuit Volunteer. A few weeks closer to Christmas the price dropped down to $80, giving Lincoln a stronger case for buying it. I still didn’t think it would be right. I told him the only way it would be okay for us to spend so much money on a tree, was if we kept it up all year round. It doesn’t seem right to buy something so expensive and beautiful, and then put it away for 90% of the year. So we decided that we would not be getting the tree. Christmas came and went and there was no tree, it didn’t stop Christmas from coming, it happened just the same, and we were happy. But then, a few days after Christmas, Lincoln was in the store and Lo and behold the tree had been dropped down to $20! It was at this time that Lincoln and I together went to the store, and happily carried our Christmas tree home and kept it up until mid-January.

And so, since the weather isn’t much of an indicator that Christmas is coming, and it doesn’t really make sense to wait for Thanksgiving since there is no reason at all why Micronesians should be celebrating a holiday celebrating the United States’ continual exploitation of the Native Americans, I saw no reason to wait to put the Christmas tree up and to pull out the Christmas tunes. But the wonders of community living lead to compromise and so we pulled out the tree and decorated our apartment into a Micronesian Wonderland, with a chimney and all. Its made life a lot more festive, and all of our guests marvel at the many snow flakes we have dangling from our ceiling. Yet all of this is not the reason why I decided to write about this. You see, about a year ago, I posted a blog about Christmas coming, about my expectations for it, and what my first Micronesian Christmas would be like. How would living as Jesuit Volunteer change my perspectives on what celebrating Christmas mean? Well I most certainly got my answer.

Last year was by far the hardest Christmas that I have ever celebrated. You see, I wasn’t in Chuuk to celebrate with my community. We had worked our butts off to take our basketball team to a tournament in the state next door, Pohnpei. The tournament would run through Christmas and so Pohnpei would be where I would spend my first JV Christmas, taking care of 12 boys in a place I was very very unfamiliar with. I can still remember waking up Christmas morning. Just like any other morning. There was no Christmas tree, or Christmas lights, or anything that resembled the fact that it was Christmas at all. I remember listening to a Christmas CD I had made, singing along to Mariah Carey’s “All I want for Christmas” and Darlene Love’s “Nobody oughta be all alone on Christmas”. I got up and woke all the boys up yelling, “Its Christmas morning! Its Christmas morning!” like little kids would, excited to open their presents. I felt very dad like, shaking the boys and rushing them to get ready for mass. Mass, which would by my only sign of the fact that it was Christmas. And it was then that I asked myself what Christmas has come to mean, and what does it really mean. When you strip away all the lights and the trees, and the presents and the stockings, will you still have Christmas? We get so lost in the consumerism of fighting for parking in the malls and shopping centers. Stressing ourselves working overtime, taking an extra job to try and pay for the parties and presents that we have to buy. And we find ourselves lost in trying to figure out what we should get this person or that person, or all the commercials that say it best, “the gift that tells the person you really love them”. How often do we lose sight of what Christmas is all about? In the end the only thing I wanted that Christmas was to simply hear the voices of my family. To know that they were all together celebrating in love, not in giving presents, but in being present to one another. I feel that its something that we have forgotten to do as our culture and society becomes more and more individualistic, one day we might forget what presence is and only know presents.

And so as we grew closer and closer to Christmas this year, I kept all these things, reflecting on them in my heart, the same way Mary did in Luke’s gospel, just taking it all in. But I was very blessed to have something else very special this Christmas season (which is really the advent season) to help me reflect on this all the better. I started helping out with the Pilipino choir during holy week this past March. And so as we were preparing the music for the Advent masses, I wanted to be very sure that we didn’t start celebrating Christmas too early, knowing that priests tend to get mad when you sing Silent Night during Advent. And it was an amazing thing how the music we chose began to set the tone for how my preparation for Christmas would unfold; songs like O Come, O Come Emmanuel, and Maranatha. Songs that I had known in college and growing up, being able to bring them and share them here with our Pilipino community as we together as Church begin to prepare for the coming of Christ. But by far the greatest gift that I have received this season, was coming together to celebrate Simbang Gabi, a Pilipino celebration of Novena masses every morning at 4:30 AM for the 9 days leading up to Christmas. At times it was a very drudging task to get myself up, but I figured out a system of setting four different alarm clocks, since none of them have a snooze button. In past experiences I would simply fall asleep in situations like this, but for some reason I felt myself energized and alive being there in mass. Perhaps it was the fact that I was in charge of leading the music, I am pretty sure that will keep you awake, but never the less I was grateful to be there. It was an amazing thing to wake up every morning and have time to pray, and to simply be present with God and others. All the daily readings, and the songs we sang were simply put. We are waiting. We need to wake up. Christ is coming. In whatever way you want to take it, in the end this is what coming to Christmas will mean for me this year. Removed from all the shopping, and all the commercialism, in the end all we have is each other, and the Christ within us that each of us brings and shares when we get together to celebrate. This is my hope and wish for Christmas. To find the presence of one another more fulfilling than any of the presents that money can buy us. I wish you all a Pwa Pwa Christmas, wherever you are celebrating it this year!