December 2005
Costa Rica
I have done a lot of thinking about Christmas this year. What is Christmas? What does it mean? Does it mean anything different in this time? In this place, away from home? It sure doesn�t feel like Christmas for me. The houses and buildings downtown have been covered with festive lights since the stores began their Christmas promotions in October, Christmas trees are for sale at various locations around town, and each week we light another candle on the Advent wreath at the church services in my garage. Yet somehow, amidst all this, the brightly shining sun, the warm temperatures outside, and the reality that this Christmas will be a Christmas without the family traditions of lefse and grasshopper pie has left me feeling somehow as though there will be no �real� Christmas for me this year. For many of us, myself included, what Christmas has come to mean is time spent surrounded by the warmth of dear friends and family; without that�can it really be Christmas?
One December night my housemates and I headed for the ILCO church in La Carpio for a youth group meeting. We arrived and were greeted warmly before sitting down in chairs set up in a circle, an advent wreath in the middle. Together we sang some songs before beginning a time of sharing. By the light of the candles on the Advent wreath that had not been blown out by the wind whistling through the open windows, in the midst of many loud bus horns outside the door which was left open to invite those who wished to enter to come in, we shared special Christmas memories and what Christmas means to each of us.
As we went around, I was surprised by the striking similarities in the words spoken by all of us. We were all anticipating the arrival of Christmas in a land not our own. Living in a house of people from Brazil, Germany and the United States, and working amongst missionaries from an even longer list of countries, I am accustomed to being around many people living in a foreign land. Yet when I ventured that night to spend time with an active youth group of the Costa Rican Lutheran Church (ILCO), it had slipped my mind that the majority of its members, although living in Costa Rica indefinitely, are away from their culture, the sights, the sounds, and the feelings of the country that is not their own. They, too, miss the feeling of Christmas to which they are accustomed.
Of course, our stories were, in fact, quite different�we missionaries/volunteers have made a choice to come to Costa Rica for a certain length of time, while many of the Nicaraguan immigrants have come to Costa Rica out of economic necessity, often separating families. Many of the youth present spoke of Christmases past without Christmas gifts to share, with a mother or a father behind in Nicaragua. Yet somehow we were united as foreigners. Later we began to speak of the very first Christmas and were reminded of the conditions into which Jesus was born�in a barn amongst the filth of animals, Mary and Joseph in a strange place, far from friends and family.
Somehow it seems as though many of us have forgotten the likely unpleasant reality of the original Christmas story and have replaced it by less likely, yet more picturesque, endearing images of Mary and Joseph wrapping their newborn in a nice, clean blanket, in a quaint, though quite lovely manger inhabited by obedient and adoring animals. Of course, any way you look at it, the Christmas story is beautiful, but somehow remembering that Jesus was born not amongst a choir of family members, but in a strange land with new sights and smells and sounds brings comfort to those of us who have become accustomed to a Christmas that is just the opposite�filled the delights of home, and now find ourselves far from home.
On Christmas Eve, my house celebrated the holiday with a great spread of food, some singing (the best that can be done considering we speak three different languages and had no music), sharing of gifts and stories. As we spoke, Felipe commented that many of us spoke of Christmas as if it were always the same, yet for him Christmas is very different every year. That started me thinking, again, of what Christmas means to me, and if it can mean different things different years.
My advent season this year was speckled with the celebration of the tradition of �posadas.� A posada is a word for an inn, and many Central American countries have a tradition of gathering outside a home, and asking entrance, as Mary and Joseph did the first Christmas night. In the San Sebastian community we celebrated the posada four times at four different homes on four different nights. The first time our singing left much to be desired (the event begins with a song that is much like a conversation or a call and response that is split between those outside asking entrance and those inside deciding whether to permit them to come in) but by the fourth time our rhythms and melodies were confident and strong and we almost managed to get through the whole song without bursts of laughter. Toward the end of the song, those outside identify themselves as Mary and Joseph and the �innkeepers� welcome them into their home for a time of sharing, food, a reading, and more singing. It is a time where people, representing the holy family, enter one another�s homes, bringing joy and love. I wonder, isn�t this, what Christmas is always about?
Christmas can be a homecoming and a time with surrounded by family and friends and Christmas can be a time far from those whom we love and in a strange place, and in that way every Christmas is unique and different. Yet, every Christmas is a remembrance of that night long ago when �the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us� (John 1:14). Christmas has little to do with where we are and whom we are with, but that God came to be amongst us, whether we are in a manger or around a dinner table covered with mashed potatoes and ham, at home or in a strange land. Jesus came to make �his dwelling among us.� The story of Christmas is that of the birth of a child��and they will call him Immanuel, which means, �God with us� (Matthew 1:22).
And so while my Christmas in Costa Rica was different than usual for me, and may not have �felt� like Christmas, I did not and could not have avoided having a �real� Christmas. For God is certainly dwelling among us here in Costa Rica�in the church in La Carpio, in the homes of San Sebastian, in the people I meet on the street. God is everywhere and everyone. Immanuel�God is with us.
We must not seek the child Jesus in the pretty figures of our Christmas cribs. We must seek him among the undernourished children who have gone to bed tonight with nothing to eat, among the poor newsboys who will sleep covered with newspapers in doorways.
�Archbishop Oscar Romero
December 24, 1979.