Christmas Memories by Lorrie Orr

 

Hand carved nativity set from San Antonio de Ibarra, Ecuador

Memories surge at Christmas. Most years meld together in a hazy cloud of joyful family gatherings, delicious food, quiet moments of meditation, old songs, and traditions all pointing to the overarching story of Immanuel, God with us. It is when something exceptional happens that Christmas memories are preserved in crystal clarity.  

1981. So many changes. It was the first Christmas away from family, with only my husband and our 7-week old daughter. In place of quiet, snowy winter scenes, raw green jungle surrounded our home. Garish plastic Santas and haphazardly strung lights adorned some homes. No Christmas carols to tire of while walking in the mall - in fact, no malls or stores to shop in unless one needed eggs or tomato paste. Worst of all, no one, of the few acquaintances we'd met during our first months in Ecuador, invited us to share Christmas with them. 

On Christmas Eve, we sat together, Tim and I, with tiny Cristal between us, looking at our small and ugly artificial tree. I had brought salt dough ornaments from home and with the high jungle humidity, they sagged off from their ribbons and fell to the floor, just like my crumbled expectations. All was bleak. We both wept, missing family desperately. We wept for all that was familiar about Christmas. We wept from loneliness. We wept from missing family. Tim read the Christmas story aloud, and we went to bed, still sad and lonely. 

We had invited a family (co-workers) to share dinner with us the next day. They came, and to my utter shock, left soon after eating. Our family traditions were a long dinner that stretched into the afternoon and evening, playing games, nibbling on goodies, doing puzzles, and finally, finishing up with leftovers before packing up tired children and heading home. Another nail hammered hard into the coffin of unmet expectations. 

Later that week I vowed that I would never experience such a Christmas again. I could, and would do something about it. One of the first things was my realization that I had relied on others to prepare Christmas and evoke the sentiments of the season. The music, the beautiful church services, the lights. Instead, I must prepare my heart before I prepared my home. I did not grow up with Advent traditions, and the next year began practicing the quiet preparations of waiting to celebrate Christ's birth.

Then I began examining my expectations. Family - impossible. Friends - definitely. Each year we invited others to share Christmas with us - and were blessed by the numerous people who sat around our table - Canadians, Americans, Germans, British, Swedish, Australians, Ecuadorians, and New Zealanders. We developed our own family traditions as our family grew to three, and some of those are carried on now into our grandchildren's lives. 

For all of our years in Ecuador Christmas was hard. In the mornings, as I dressed for the day, my mind flew to Canada and to beloved family gathered together. There were always a few tears, but then I would walk out to prepare breakfast for my family, knowing that the truth of Immanuel - God with us, God with me - would not only sustain me, but give me great joy in the celebration of his birth.