SIlent Night. Holy Night

by Doug Roland

Here in South Africa, the last two weeks of the year are frequently called the "Festive Season". For us, it has seemed empty. The carol services we attended barely mentioned Advent. At no time did I feel a sense of wonder. Decorations are the exception rather than the rule. "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Christmas" greetings were rare. We organized a covered dish staff Christmas party at the house. There is an unfamiliar reluctance to cook among a number of people we know. And like the younger generation back home, RSVP has fallen into disuse.

It's really not anyone's fault. It's what can happen if you risk hoping that local custom will mirror the seasonal celebrations you've grown up with. Our lack of interest in the season this year arises out of our displacement in a faraway land. The theology has not changed - only the landscape. We know the story but there is no emotion attached. Being away and separated from family and friends is a new experience, one hard to plan for. We discovered quickly that we cannot replicate what we know and remember Christmas to be. Admitting that to ourselves has helped. We just ain't in Kansas anymore. All this has caused us to look more deeply into the our traditional response to the Christmas story now placed in the context of this country.

More than any other time of the year, Christmas is a family affair. Our feelings about and responses to Christmas were planted when we were young children. Families - relation, extended and church, all had traditions. We looked forward to them and the joyous opportunities to share ourselves and our new toys with others. I remember the first BB gun, a very special book I still have, indoor trees with lights, the dog sniffing and looking for his present, and the smell of turkey baking. Later, relatives or close friends we had not seen for a long time knocked on the door. There was the year that Nat spent studying in England and came home for Christmas break. The day he we went to a birthday party for his Great-Aunt Clara, who became the namesake for his first child 12 years later. Family is at the core of out relationship to this holiday.

Then there are the traditions - the Christmas Eve services with candles and carols; the reading of the Night Before Christmas; waking up at 5am; who plays Santa?; who goes first?; playing outside with our new stuff after Christmas dinner.

All that was missing this year. It would have been easy to miss the whole point and slide apathetically through the season. Instead, the story was re-told in an unexpected way.

Several of you have asked what did we do this season? Well, we didn't mope around.

We went to three carol services - all different. One at the seminary, one at a local church in the tent overflow, and one in a tiny Anglican church in a village named Himeville. (We were there to house/dog-sit for a retired couple who were spending Christmas with family 2 hours away.) While each service was nice, there's still no place like home.

Himeville rests in the foothills of the Drakensberg Mountains, perhaps the most dramatic mountains in the country. Christmas Eve arrived on a rare cloudless day. We had a driver (who was also a bird expert) take us up 30 miles of rocky, steep road known as Sani Pass to the mountain kingdom of Lesotho. The four-wheeler bounced and churned its way up switchback roads clutter with rocks, the occasional broken-down vehicle, and luggage unloaded to reduce the weight of an overloaded van. At the top, our passports were stamped at Lesotho passport control, operated by one man in a tiny building. It sat just across the road from the highest pub in Africa, in a geographic sense.

Lesotho is a sparse, but beautiful land and one of the poorest countries in the world. We drove inland about 10 kilometers. A cold summer wind swept across the broad, green and rocky landscape dotted with stone huts, sheep and a few horses. The huts are for the shepherds who on that day were wrapped in heavy wool blankets tending to their flocks. The shepherds are mostly teenagers unable to find any other employment. For six months of the year, they live alone in the huts, sheltered from the cold nights of summer. The sheep were herded to grazing areas and small ponds. One herd met us on the road down the hill headed for the market. Each shepherd is responsible for every sheep in the flock. He must protect them from predators and count them regularly. It is lonely work.

Christmas Day opened cloudy and wet and stayed that way. Nonetheless, we hiked for several hours near a river. Along the way we met Germans and French which only proves that hikers everywhere are a little nuts. We were completely soaked and sacrificed at least one pair of boots. Later, we were invited by neighbors (still in Himeville) to come over for afternoon tea. There were about 9 of us altogether. The tea resembled red wine somehow. These folks were British, if not in citizenship, then in heritage. We joined them in a team game of Trivial Pursuit, United Kingdom edition. I did manage to answer a couple of questions. I knew that James Arness and Peter Graves were brothers. My team almost didn't believe me. (We won.) This was quite a privilege their Christmas afternoon and it had that feel of a family tradition.

So while this Christmas has been very different for us, Luke's story did not change. He begins with shepherds tending their flocks at night. This year, for us, the shepherds and their sheep were in the high plains of a tiny and poor mountain kingdom. It was our own special Christmas pageant and a stark reminder that, without all the lights, parties, games and food, a child was born, and none of us have been the same. Somehow, I think that spending our Christmas Eve in the mountains of Lesotho was not a coincidence.