The Perfect Christmas Holiday Season

For missionaries away from home, holidays can be melancholy times.  As our cabin was being readied and family members were arriving a week in advance from out of town, we thought of them and wished we could be there.  Getting our Christmas letter/blog prepared was good therapy and kept me busy most of the week.  We also were beginning to exchange gifts with temple missionaries and workers.  Small sincere presents given and received helped focus on what we enjoy here and not what we were missing.


We knew in advance that Christmas Eve on Saturday would be a regular day at the temple.  December 24/25 are not holidays in Ukraine but some of our good members came to the temple because they wanted to remember Christ in a special way.  When we got home we had preparations for the next day to make.  And we received a special gift of a small lighted Christmas tree that made us happy!

Sunday morning was clear, cold and dark as we left Kyiv.  We were able to be passengers in a car driven by temple patrons from Moscow who were returning home by way of Smolensk.  So driving north through Chernigov was “on the way” and a place to stop for church services.

It was nice to be able to take our extra sacks of baked goods and food for the dinner in their car and not on the public transportation we usually use.  

It was a frosty morning and there had been fog at night that had frozen onto the trees.  We were able to take some beautiful pictures as the sun was rising.  

As we drove farther north and near the Desna River, the frost on the trees got thicker!

This is the usual sight of St. Catherine's church (1715) as we enter Chernigov, but dressed up in frost!  In the park across the street from our current meeting location is a very old church (built around 1201, damaged and restored after WWII).  I hurried to take a picture in the morning sun.

  

We arrived early and I could sing with other sisters around the key board as we often do.  As we were singing Christmas carols I felt deeply how “perfect” this Christmas was! 

The speakers in the sacrament service were a convert of a year using information from the Ensign on the history of celebrating Christmas, the branch president’s counselor giving a testimony of Christ, and then the branch president.  Since Christmas is celebrated here on Dec 25 or Jan 7 and there is gift giving also on several other days, the holiday season is prolonged for almost a month.  He made the point that it doesn’t matter when we celebrate; it is better to just think of Jesus and giving gifts daily.  He ended his talk with the Savior’s invitation, “Come, follow me”.  Then we all prepared to serve the food that everyone had brought and had a feast. 

This is the serving table before it was completely covered with food for people to eat!

The children were careful to select the most important foods!

As we walked to the bus stop, we went through the city square where the New Year's tree is located.  Amusement rides had been brought in and some of them were operating even though it was a week before the New Year holiday.

We arrived back at our temple block with the display of the first Christmas

In the afternoon we had time to Skype with all of our family members as they were beginning their Christmas mornings opening presents before attending church.  We were also grateful for iPhone pictures.  Here are two examples:

They got up earlier than 7a but could not wait!

They had church early at 8a!  Good job getting ready early

Our Christmas celebration continued through our Monday when we had a wonderful turkey dinner with our temple missionaries.  Unfortunately I was too busy enjoying the good food that everyone helped prepare to think about taking pictures until we were clearing things away and preparing for our program.

JD was part of a reader's presentation

We sang carols and shared spiritual thoughts.  Half of our group leaves this January, so we especially enjoyed this time together.  

We also had a temple missionary social on New Year's Eve, after another week including Saturday at the temple.  There was more good food!

And we played some games--here trying to be serious and not smile or laugh, and later a few rounds of Rook for those few who were interested.  We stayed up until midnight, and then went to sleep listening to many fireworks being set off all around and most of the night.

Sunday morning, New Year's Day, we walked to attend church in a ward about a mile away, passing by a beautiful Orthodox building glistening in the morning sunlight.

Our church meeting place is much less impressive--the second floor of a commercial business building, with the entrance door open on the right end.  But we enjoyed meeting with the members.  Then we walked home and had the rest of the day to relax and communicate with family.  The Orthodox Christmas Day is Jan 7 with New Year's Day following on Jan14, so there are holidays ahead.  We will have patrons visiting the temple because school is out and some have vacation from work.  So we will enjoy our time in the temple.

Don't Forget the Star!

Don't Forget the Star is the title of a short book by George Durrant that JD read to our children as they lay in the cabin loft bedroom trying to go to sleep on Christmas Eve.  The younger girls dropped off to sleep during the early chapters about Durrant's childhood memories and the older boys sometimes lasted through the later chapters describing missionaries away from home during the holidays.  The children could look through the bedroom door and see the star that topped our tall Christmas tree.

Here in Ukraine, trees are being erected in town squares but they are New Year's trees.  I have recently been reading Babi Yar by A Anatoli Kuznetsov, who recounts what it was like to live in Kiev, specifically from the time that the Germans occupied until their withdrawal (Sept 21, 1941—Nov 4, 1943) and the reoccupation of the Soviets.  Of his earlier life, he wrote: 

I began going to school ...in 1937…at the age of eight.   The papers announced that an outstanding comrade-in-arms of Stalin’s, Postushev, had proposed the introduction of a new national holiday-the New Year, complete with a fir tree.  Until then, ever since the revolution, there had been no fir trees, so that for us small children this was really something new.  The fir tree was set up in the new school building, the little girls dressed themselves up as snowflakes, and I recited a poem about Jack Frost surveying his domains.  And we finished up with a song which had appeared in the newspaper and which ended with the words:  “And it was Mr Postushev who gave us our lovely tree.”

Grandma said: ‘This is Christmas. It was Jesus who gave us the tree.”  I argued with her: “No, it was Postyshev.  There is no Jesus Christ and there never was!  Soviet rule gave the children fir trees.”  “You little puppy,” Grandma said, and we had a violent quarrel.  But my mother said: “My goodness, what a lucky boy you are, Tolya.  You’ve only just started school, and they’ve built you a new school,… introduced the fir tree again, and even asphalted the footpaths.  All you have to do is work.  Make the best of it all and work hard; only read more, read everything you can---there is wisdom in books.”

It soon became apparent, however, that not everything in the books was wisdom.  In class one day we were ordered to open our textbooks at the page with a portrait of Postushev on it and tear it out---Postushev had turned out to be an enemy of the people.   So he was executed, even though he had introduced the fir tree.  It was a big shock for our little minds, but we weren’t given a chance to think much about it.  It immediately became a matter of routine, something quite ordinary and usual.  Sometimes we would be ordered to tear out other pages, on other occasions to cross out with ink certain sentences or names.  Making a mess of our textbooks was really quite a pleasant occupation which we all liked enormously. 

This is the city plaza (named Red Square) in Chernigov with the New Year tree just erected.

Wikipedia gives the following information about Christmas trees:

The custom of erecting a decorated Christmas tree can be historically traced back at least as far as 15th century Livonia (Estonia) and 16th century Northern Germany.…  Only in the 19th century did they come into use more widely, often in schools and inns before they appeared in homes…. In the early 19th century, the custom became popular among the nobility and spread to royal courts as far as Russia…  In Russia, the Christmas tree was banned shortly after the October Revolution but then reinstated as a New-year fir-tree (Новогодняя ёлка) in 1935…. It became a fully secular icon of the New Year holiday; for example, the crowning star was regarded not as a symbol of the Bethlehem Star, but as the Red Star….  This tradition persists after the fall of the USSR, with the New Year holiday outweighing the Christmas (7 January) for a wide majority of Russian people.

A fellow temple missionary couple, the Terry's, who served as English teachers in China, told us that "Christmas" with trees and presents and Santa is celebrated widely in China, but with no attachment to Christ.  They don't even know what the word Christmas means.  As we see large displays of tree ornaments and holiday decorations here in Ukraine, they are the same as can be bought in America, and probably throughout the world and they are mostly made in China!  The holiday has become popularized and commercialized worldwide as a reason to sell things and have a vacation.  

Wherever there are good practicing Christians we will all try to keep Christ in Christmas---"Don't forget the star"!  In our patron house lobby a decorated tree was set up for the first time this year.  This is a young family from Odessa who have spent the week before Dec. 25 in Kyiv near the temple, making memories with their young ones.  These children are being taught about Jesus and Christmas.   

While we don't have a large tree in our apartment, or many presents, we have everything we really need.  We are grateful for the best gifts: for loving family members, for this special opportunity to be serving in Ukraine, and for our Savior, who is the center of this Christmas holiday, and our lives.  Because of Jesus Christ, all people will be resurrected and live forever.  Through acceptance of Christ's atoning sacrifice, people will not need to suffer for their sins and can again live in His presence.  If we make and keep sacred covenants in holy temples, our families can continue to be together eternally and we can be part of Heavenly Father's kingdom.  These are the greatest gifts from Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ to all mankind.  Thus we try to remember and always follow the star that first lighted the way to the baby Jesus in Bethlehem:

What shall we give to the babe in the manger,


What shall we offer the child in the stall?


Incense and spices and gold we've a-plenty-


Are these the gifts for the king of us all?

What shall we give to the boy in the temple,


What shall we offer the man by the sea?


Palms at his feet and hosannas uprising;


Are these for him who will carry the tree?

What shall we give to the lamb who was offered,

Rising the third day and shedding his love?


Tears for his mercy we'll weep at the manger,


Bathing the infant come down from above.  

What Shall We Give? - Mormon Tabernacle Choir https://www.mormontabernaclechoir.org/.../what-shall-we-give-mormon-...