Chris-mis Everywhere

The following guest post is exactly what I needed to hear today. Monte Peterson from thefoodsmith lives in Hong Kong with her family, and it gives me shivers to read her perspective here:

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Chris-mis Everywhere

It stabs me a little every time I hear his sweet voice lisp “Chris-mis!” He’s so excited, but what he points to as he says it are elaborately decorated trees, mall displays of Santa, gilded bells, gifts and garlands. To him, “Chris-mis” is everywhere.

This is our second Christmas in Hong Kong, our home for the last year and a half. Friends often ask if they “do” Christmas in Hong Kong. Yes, I say, laughing. Hong Kong is the shopping capital of the world–of course they “do” Christmas.

I have for many years tried to create a distinction between Advent and Christmas in our home … waiting to decorate, waiting to sing Christmas carols. We lived for so long in rural areas without a tv that it was easy to ignore the commercial aspects of the season.

But now we are in Hong Kong, where we walk through malls everyday. And as much as I hate to hear my son look at a snowman and call him “Chris-mis” I am a little embarrassed to admit that the decorations are a comfort, even the tacky ones. “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas” brings a tear to my eye and a beautiful store display of a fireplace hung with stockings can stop me in my tracks.

We really are quite content with life in Hong Kong. It’s just that this time of year brings on wave after wave of homesickness, and so the nolstalgia and sentimentality of the mass-produced Christmas gets me. I know that my decorating and baking are as much a bid to stave off loneliness as they are a means of preparing for and celebrating the Incarnation, but I don’t know what to do with that.

The truth is, this year we have something in common with Mary and Joseph–themselves far from home–and with the millions of refugees and immigrants in our world. Moreover, while the feeling of homesickness may be particularly acute for those of us literally far from the land of our birth, being homesick is simply part of the human condition. We are strangers in a strange land, every one of us homesick for the coming Kingdom.

And so we’re not ignoring the (purely secular) “Chris-mis” out there–we’re just inviting Christ into it, to hallow and redeem our baking, our singing, our “making merry.” If the incarnation is about nothing else, it is about Jesus coming to be with us right where we are, even in a mall or a tiny flat in a crowded city.

We are eating lots of traditional meals, even though the imported ingredients are costly. And we are baking our favorite Christmas cookies in a tiny toaster oven. We have more friends here than ever who have never heard the story of Jesus’ birth, so we are offering lots of hospitality, welcoming people into our celebrations. To paraphrase Frederick Buechner, my need to be festive meets the world’s need to be included, and there is great joy.

Mostly, I’m resisting the urge to turn inward and only create something special for my family, and in so doing, I find that my son is right. “Chris-mis” is everywhere.

Tagged as: Christmas Memories, Guest Bloggers