I Wasn't Home for Christmas

I Wasn’t Home for Christmas

It’s as simple as that. I wake up January 19, look at the calendar, wonder where Christmas went and how it got to be 2010, and then I remember.

Oh yeah. I spent Christmas in Peru. Crazy.

This was the first Christmas of my life that I’ve spent away from my family, my house, my bed, my church, my dinner table, my tree – whatever sign of homeliness and familiarity we decide to use, this was the first time I was far from any of it. I missed it, for sure, but mostly in the days leading up to Christmas, in Advent (my favorite season of all, liturgical or otherwise), the season of expectation. A certain excitement and warmth builds within us as we wait for…something. What exactly we don’t know. The coming of the Christ child? Getting to light the big white candle? (Personally the pink candle was always my favorite.) Finally getting to find out what’s inside that present? The Monroe/Block Christmas Party? The Christmas pageant? The Christmas pig? The infamous “Christmas Stew” that you eat for weeks after Christmas and basically consists of everything you ate for Christmas dinner thrown together in a pot? The day when your kids finally let you change the radio station form Lite 98? We don’t really know. But it’s somewhere in the waiting that the Christmas spirit always finds me.

So this year, as I was waiting, I had the very disconcerting realization that I had no idea, really, what I was waiting for. None of the things listed above were going to happen for me this year. Except for the coming of the Christ child, I guess, but who really knows what that means anyway. I wasn’t in much of a mood for divine mysteries.

So I was excited, I was sad, I had new learning experiences, I spent an inordinate amount of time with Sarah Alta at Megaplaza because in some strange way, the lights and banter of the mall were the closest thing I could find to my experiences of US Christmases. (As a side note, I actually don’t mind commercialized Christmas. Sure, it’s very easy to miss the point and important to remind ourselves that we are really celebrating the humble birth of a man who lived a life of revolutionary love and was to change history forever, but for me, there’s something exciting, sentimental, and romantic about the lights, the music, the excited kids…it just does it for me.) I ate too much, exchanged gifts, cried on the phone with my family (sorry about that, guys…), watched Love Actually and had myself a Peruvian Christmas. I’m still processing what it was to spend Christmas away from home and experience it in a completely different cultural context – I may not finish processing that until next Christmas. But for now, I’ll try to describe for you, as best I can, my Peruvian Christmas.

First of all, as many of you know, working in the church makes for a crazy Christmas season. And it certainly was busy and crazy, but not as much as I expected. You see, for a culture in which church and religious practice are often treated as the most essential and core part of one’s life, Christmas is surprisingly…unchurchly. Christmas itself is really about family here. Each of the two churches I work for had a Christmas service, but one was December 20^th and the other the 23^rd. Christmas Eve services don’t happen in the IEP (though I’m willing to bet something like that exists in the Catholic church…).

In the IEP Ingeniería, the service was a little bit like a big Christmas talent show with interspersed songs (though most weren’t Christmas songs), a mini Christmas story reenactment, and a sermon. And then when everything was done, we drank hot chocolate (even though it’s summer here) and ate Paneton, the traditional Peruvian Christmas food which is best described as a lighter, fluffier, and much more delicious version of fruitcake. Each of the children present received a present bought by the church especially for him or her and everyone was happy and full of Christmas spirit. Not the same feeling I get at the Christmas Eve service at home, but still, the presence of a spirit of joy.

The service at the IEP Collique was less remarkable and less interesting, but along the same lines…talent show-esque with a sermon worked in there and Paneton and hot chocolate afterward.

Another interesting note –at both churches, where secular music, stories, really secular anything is often frowned-upon, the altars and front of the sanctuaries were decorated with what we call “tacky-Christmas-lights”, Christmas trees, and basically things you would never find in the sanctuary of a typical PCUSA church in the states. Like I said it’s interesting to see the differences across culture of what we to be sacred.

As I said earlier, there’s no Christmas Eve service. In fact, Christmas itself is celebrated on the 24^th, our Christmas Eve, at midnight. It’s much like our conception of New Years (or Michael Scott’s conception of marriage, if you’ve seen the episode of The Office where Jim and Pam get married). The whole extended family gathers at the home of some relative and waits anxiously for midnight, when they can officially begin Christmas dinner, a great feast in the middle of the night (quite a surprise for the stomach, since in Peru lunch is the biggest meal of the day and you don’t usually go to bed with a lot of food on your stomach). Christmas dinner consists of turkey, rice prepared with Coca-Cola (not kidding!), lots of other delicious dishes, and ends with (you guessed it!) Paneton!

Another exciting and totally new thing for me about Christmas is that at midnight, when it officially becomes “Christmas Day,” EVERYONE sets off fireworks. I mean everyone. I’m not sure about the legality of fireworks in Peru, but as my host family once reminded me, “prohibido” doesn’t really mean that much here. It’s bigger than any Fourth of July show I’ve ever seen, really an amazing sight. And such a contrast to the “Silent Night” that I think of when I think of Christmas night. It was a sight to be seen. I can honestly say I have never and probably never will again celebrate Christmas in such a loud, festive, boisterous way!

The 25^th, the big Christmas Day for us, is more of a day of rest in Peru. As you can imagine, if you started dinner in your relatives’ house across town at midnight the night before, you’re not much for waking up early on Christmas Morning. I think Alta and I got out of bed around noon. We went to Flor’s family’s house for Christmas lunch (we’d been with Eduardo’s family the night before) but before, as we were wrapping presents, made sure to listen to the Messiah (typical Christmas music at my house), Amy Grant Christmas songs (Typical Terpstra fam Christmas music), and Mannheim Steamroller, which feels like home to both of us. We also spent much of the time that she was here with me sitting on my bed harmonizing to Christmas Carols, mostly minor, of course!

At Flor’s family’s house we had another delicious turkey meal and did a Secret Santa gift exchange among the adults (all the kids got some sort of tricycle). Then we came back, crashed, I called my family and cried, Sarah talked with her host family from Huancavelica…and we ate some more Paneton. Not kidding. And that was it. That was Christmas. We left the next day for vacation (which will be my next blog post, coming soon, I promise). Very surreal, and looking back, it doesn’t feel like Christmas actually happened. It was just all so different. Like I said, I’m still very much processing it. If I come to any great insights about the interconnectedness of the whole world in the birth of the one poor child who changed the world (and there’s 10 million more who probably could…), I’ll be sure to let y’all know. But who knows. Come Christmas next year, maybe I’ll find myself feeling a little homesick for fireworks, summer weather, and of course Paneton!