president’s blog: a Missionary Christmas 12/14/09

A Missionary Christmas (12/14/09)

by Evan Drake

 There are some very special advantages to being a missionary that go along with the sacrifices that come with the challenge of living in a foreign country.  I always found it hard to decide if Christmas fit into the advantage or sacrifice category.  I can’t say that Christmas was depressing to us during the 14 Christmases we spent in the suburbs of Paris, France.  We were able to visit the shopping district in Paris and see the incredible displays that went up in the Galeries Lafayette or in Printemps.  We almost always found a way to drive down the Champs Elysee (called the most beautiful avenue in the world) and marvel at the sparkling white lights that filled the trees and lined the streets.  You have to see the Eiffel Tower lit up in red and green to believe it, too. 

Some traditions (or lack of them) were hard to adjust to.  There were very few popular Christmas songs or carols in French.  After you hear “Petit Papa Noel” (the French song about Santa Claus) 100 times you long for a few choruses of Rudolph or something to get that song out of your head.  Even the church has very few Christmas songs as part of its tradition. They never had carol singing or even felt the need.  Our first year in France, we tried to find a good old tree to put up in our apartment.  There were some rather ugly artificial trees at the store.  Then we saw a real tree that seemed just right for us.  We got it home, prepared it and trimmed it.  It looked so nice.  After a day or two, we noticed a significant number of needles on the floor in the morning.  After a couple of weeks, it looked like a Charlie Brown tree with just a few brown branches and no needles.  The day after Christmas, the tree came down because we couldn’t stand to look at the pitiful thing anymore. We tried to find a turkey to have on Christmas (we also tried unsuccessfully to get one for an American Thanksgiving but were told that they weren’t available until December).  The grocery store would begin selling turkeys, ducks and geese a week before Christmas.  The largest turkey available was usually around 5 lbs.  I went to the butcher shop one year and pleaded with him to find me the biggest turkey he could get.  My father had always made sure to get a huge turkey for our family every year when I was growing up (I remember turkeys in excess of 40 lbs. a few times).  I went back to the butcher to pick up the huge turkey and he proudly handed me the 5 kg. turkey he had found (that’s just over 10 lbs).  He looked at me as if he had caught the incredible bird himself.  I went home and we prepared our glorified chicken for Christmas dinner.  The average French family celebrates Christmas on Christmas Eve and spends Christmas day sleeping it off.  They eat oysters, mushrooms and goose liver with a Yule log for dessert.  There’s no football, snow or any of the other things we were used to.  I did get a videotape of a bowl game one time and tried to make myself pretend it was New Years Day.  It just wasn’t the same.  Although, I actually appreciated the tapes my sister sent us one year that had all of the Lifetime Christmas movies on it.  That’s how desperate we were for some taste of home.

In reality, we adjusted to the different flavors of Christmas without much problem.  The hardest part of Christmas to us as missionaries was being separated from our families.  We tried very hard to make Christmas special for our kids.  It wasn’t always simple for them to figure out what was going on.  Sometimes we would get packages from churches that arrived in November since they didn’t want to be late.  Some people try too hard and you end up feeling guilty.  One church asked for a list of things we couldn’t get in France.  We filled it out not expecting them to send a box UPS air filled with taco shells, Jiff peanut butter and bubble gum at a cost of over $200 in postage.  Others didn’t seem to mind not beating the Christmas deadline and we would still be getting boat mail packages in February.  Our families tried really hard to include us in their celebrations.  It usually cost more to mail the packages than the package itself was worth. It definitely was the thought that counted.  We would usually get a phone call in the evening (we were six hours ahead) and get filled in on the gifts and food back at home.  It always seemed to fall a little short to hear about the family celebration in a five minute phone call.  I remember thinking to myself (one of those pity party moments that all missionaries go through) at least one time that I wished they would just leave us alone because it just made us miss them more to remind us how much fun they were having without us.  The truth of the matter was that Christmas more than any other time brought us together with our boys.  We grew to love just being our little family of 7 on that day.  We were never invited to someone else’s house for Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, but we made it a very special day at the Drake house.  We would eat a special breakfast. Joy would make homemade cinnamon rolls or an egg casserole and we would splurge and buy the expensive Tropicana orange juice.  We would open our presents and spend the next 3 hours putting together legos or bikes (remember, we had 5 boys) and playing with them.  The last few years we were in France, we invited an elderly Swiss woman who had been a missionary in Africa and who lived alone to spend Christmas afternoon with us.  She would play the surrogate grandmother and hold the kids in her lap and read stories or just listen to them tell about their new game or toy.  The day would die down with us watching a Christmas movie as a family or playing some new game we had received.

You know, the funny thing is, after 7 Christmases in the US, I really miss those lonely Christmases in France.  There wasn’t as much hype and maybe a little less noise but they were really good times. It wasn’t that nobody cared about us.  But, nobody bothered us too much.  It wasn’t easy to be separated from home.   We were forced to learn that home is where you make it.  Our family has rarely been all together at Christmas.  We won’t be able to be all together this year.  Instead of languishing over what we didn’t have, we made the best of what we had.  I am convinced that it would be a better idea to focus on the people we are with at Christmas instead of the things or the activities that just seem to get in the way.  We were probably happiest at Christmas when there was little to distract us and little to clutter our intimate celebration.

I have reminisced in this way to be able to say that, missionaries tend to feel the distance from home a lot more acutely at Christmas.  I don’t have an answer as to how to include them in your Christmas.  It’s not going to be simple. I just wanted you to understand that Christmas may be a hard time of year for them.  Try to encourage them in some tangible way.  A gift, a call, a visit or a special prayer can help.  Today, with the advanced technology of skype communication and lower cost phone calls, it’s easier than back in the dark ages of the 80’s and 90’s when we were in Europe and it cost $2.00 a minute to phone home.  Don’t forget those wonderful families who have the honor of serving Jesus cross-culturally.  They try hard to adapt to a new culture and country and do an amazing job.  But, sometimes, they are reminded painfully that they are far away from home and very little can bridge that void.  I want to say Thank-you to all of the Bible Basics personnel that serve faithfully far from home and family.  You are not forgotten.  May God bless you greatly and give you a wonderful Christmas season and a fulfilling New Year.

 

Your servant,

 Evan Drake

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