three days ago the third…and four days ago too
Thursday, December 10th, 2009Brasov, Romania
Throughout much of Western and Central Europe the sixth day in December is set aside for celebrating St Nicholas’ feast day. Known for being kind to children and as a generous gift-giver, the saint has been remembered now for centuries through the tradition of leaving gifts in shoes on this day…..while we were aware of the story in a vague sense, we did not connect it with a particular date, and so discovering this information only the night before, all we managed was a lollipop in each shoe…..and then because we didn’t go out in the morning, no-one even found their lollipops until we manufactured an excuse: “OK kids, shoes on, there’s time for us to take a walk before we head out later.”
We were pleased to see that such a small treat still gives joy…and we’ll have a new Christmas tradition to take home to New Zealand. December 6th from now on, there will be a little something in the children’s shoes….their idea!
Our family traditions involve focussing primarily on the Real Meaning of Christmas. Every day we read Scriptures from the prophets foretelling events that would happen hundreds of years later through to the accounts of men, who lived with Jesus…back to the psalms and forward to letters written well after the death and resurrection of God-as-Man.
We burn advent candles as part of our preparation.
We sing carols together and listen to Christmas music, the favourite being the philharmonic concert attended every year with friends.
We play with a little nativity set I made as a young child a Very Long Time Ago.
We display a wooden puzzle nativity set given to us by friends a couple of decades ago (the baby Jesus does not appear until Christmas morning).
We pore over books with moving paintings.
We decorate a tree…actually, we decorate the whole house.
We make gifts to share with friends.
That is to say, we do all these things when we are at home.
And we do what we can manage when we’re away.
Last year we were in Laos at this time and possessions-wise all we had for our special Christmas remembrances were long narrow yellow candles.…this year we have a Christmassy red one, and even an evergreen wreath as well.
With the aroma of pine and burning wax filling the air, we have been singing and singing…..lots of carols every morning, as well as, perhaps poignantly, “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas”. Athough we will be in Turkey by the time Christmas Day dawns, we are still currently in Romania and we are eagerly awaiting the snow, which is forecast to start any day now.
We wouldn’t have had a nativity set, except that we discovered one locally and bought it to gift to our friends – we created a stable out of branches we collected on our Poiana trip together, and now they have a concrete (or plastic) reminder of how we all shared the love of Christmas in 2009 (and we enjoyed it for a week before we passed it one to them!)
For the past few years at home we had been involved with the “shoebox project” run by Samaritan’s Purse – filling a shoebox with bits and pieces for kids affected by poverty, war, disease or famine and who would otherwise not receive Christmas gifts or hear the Christmas message. Our few shoeboxes looked insignificant on their own, but grouped together with others from the church, represented a bigger contribution, although still not anything grand. This year some of the family were able to be involved at the other end of the project….a truck arrived in Brasov from England and there were a thousand boxes needing to be unloaded. To see the sheer number, and to realise that it was all a result of little individual efforts, was encouraging. It confirmed again to us that the little things matter. So with a bunch of guys from local churches, carton after carton of shoeboxes came off the truck….they will be distributed to the needy over the next couple of weeks. And the same will happen in villages, towns and cities all over the world. Christmas will come to many.
rayres