“What is Christmas? It is tenderness for the past, courage for the present, hope for the future.” – Agnes M. Pahro
My mom sat on the couch orchestrating our Christmas decorating. Her abilities surpassed what me, my brother and father combined would ever be able to do. While we had some creative license, we happily served as the crew to bring her vision to life. I remember that one particular task required a lot of coordination: especially for a small child! She would carefully pick out two thin strips of metallic paper. When she pulled them out, she delicately lined them up evenly and held them out for us to carefully grab in the middle. We were then tasked to lay the two strips over an empty branch on the tree. When we finished, our Christmas tree glistened as the shimmering tinsel swayed with the rotating of the nearby fan.
Looking at the tinsel glistening in the Christmas lights, I knew it represented icicles forming on evergreen trees somewhere far away from where I grew up in the tiny town of Salta, Argentina; somewhere where kids wore something other than my summer vacation attire of shorts and a t-shirt.
Christmas in our town of Salta, situated at the base of the Andes in the Southern Hemisphere, is a very different experience because December feels like a North American July. Although Christmas was a major fixture of this predominantly Catholic nation, Argentina didn’t furnish one important thing: frozen water!
I knew how far away those frosty trees were because one Christmas in first grade, my family was in the US for a year and we made the long trip from Phoenix, Arizona to Minot, North Dakota to spend Christmas with my grandparents. Everything was just as the songs described with a snow-covered forest and a sledding hill for the taking. My brother and I wore boots purchased for an Argentine Gaucho (cowboy) outfit; which had no tread, so we slipped up the hill as much as down while the other kids ran up the hill with confidence.
In Argentina, our lives were focused on serving the people in the provinces where my parents worked as missionaries. In addition to participating in the Argentine celebrations, my parents were very intentional about creating space for traditions from ‘home.’ One of the most treasured was everything Christmas.
In Argentina, Christmas is focused on a big meal at midnight of Christmas Eve and most children get a single present (most presents come on January 6; known to many as Epiphany and known in Latin America as Three Wiseman’s Day). We would begin Christmas Eve at Church, participate in as much of the late night celebrating as two little children could handle and then we would head home: looking forward to our own Christmas celebration the next morning.
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| My brother and I celebrating a Summer Christmas. |
My Mom and Dad curated all the resources to celebrate a US holiday well; the special Christmas books, the traditional Christmas cookies, stockings filled with goodies and presents under the tree. While some of our gifts came from local stores in our town, they went to great lengths to bring a few special things from the United States (sometimes years in advance) for us to look forward to. The favorite toys were Legos, Transformers, Atari video games and anything Star Wars.
It was a delightful way to celebrate the birth of our Savior. It didn’t seem strange to mix traditions from Argentina and the US together as we anticipated Christmas Day. After all, we did that in every other area of our lives.
Still there was a longing for snow and cold weather for the holidays. The songs yearned for a white Christmas, Charlie Brown and Snoopy skated on the pond, the Grinch stood angrily in the snowbank overlooking Whoville, and all the traditions pointed to a wintery wonderland. But I was experiencing the heights of summer. What a strange feeling to be belting out “White Christmas” as you throw a water balloon at your brother!
Between the water balloons, oscillating fans, green grass and warm summer days, Christmas was simply part of a long summer vacation. Right after Christmas, instead of heading out skiing or sitting by the fire, we headed up to our summer cabin in a little town called Huacalera, where our mornings were filled with hiking and afternoons consisted of reading, board games and crawdad hunting in the creek by our cabin.
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| A painting of my brother and I done by a street painter in Salta, Argentina. |
Nestled in a “quebrada,” which literally means a break in the ground, this little corner of the Andes Mountains was a dramatic valley that stretched from the edges of the Altiplano desert near Bolivia and Chile all the way down to the green valleys and jungles of Argentina and Bolivia. The Quebrada of Humauaca has been a trade route for thousands of years and linked the southern farmlands to the Inca Empire. The ruins of fortified cities dot the river valley and were the source of unending wonder as we imagined what life was like when those were bustling centers of trade.
As we drove to our cabin to spend several weeks of summer vacation, we passed a strange triangle-shaped statue (a sundial). It celebrated that we were crossing the Tropic of Capricorn; the latitude of 23.4 degrees below the Equator and the lowest latitude where the sun appears directly above you. If you follow the line around the globe, there are only 10 countries that it crosses. Of those, only 4 have snow: Argentina, Chile, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand.
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropic_of_Capricorn |
But strangely, even though Argentina has tons of snow further south, up north at the Tropic of Capricorn (which sits a little below 10,000 feet above sea level) it almost never snows. That section of the Andes is punctuated by high arid deserts. The Chilean side of the mountains even has what they call a ‘rain shadow’ and gets far less than even I was used to on the other side of the 20,000-foot peaks. Our area of the Andes is one of only two places where saguaro cactus grow, the other being North America.
As we prepared for Christmas and then headed out for summer vacations, it was without snow, ice, jackets, fireplaces and all that goes along with a winter celebration. As I reflect on the disconnect between my Christmas experience and all the traditions that I grew up hearing about, one song stands out. It was Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas.” It resonated with me for the same reason it became so popular with soldiers when it first came out in 1941, I was longing for home.
The “White Christmas” song entered the countries’ consciousness just after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and ahead of several years where family members would be very far from home and missing it terribly. Irving Berlin said this about the moment that made “White Christmas” an endearing classic, "It came out at a time when we were at war, and it became a peace song in wartime—nothing I ever intended."
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| Irving Berlin singing on the USS Arkansas - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_Berlin |
I wasn’t at war, but I was far from my birth home, missing my extended family, and all it meant to celebrate Christmas in a cold northern place. I probably missed the idea of it all more than the reality of cold winters, but I missed it just the same.
As I learned about Irving Berlin, I began to feel a connection to him. He was a Jewish immigrant from Russia (more precisely Belarus) who came to New York with his family when he was very young. I was an American immigrant-of-a-sort living in Argentina. He soon began using his musical abilities to provide for his family and he went on to be one of America’s most famous lyricists.
Like Berlin, I was far from home. But unlike my experience, the sorrowful melody comes from the deep tragedy that he experienced around Christmas. First, being a Jew, Christmas was not his holiday to celebrate. Nevertheless, it was impossible for him to ignore. He suffered two tragedies that were tied to Christmas. He was engaged before Christmas to Dorothy Goetz in 1911. They were married in February, but on their honeymoon in Cuba Dorothy contracted typhoid fever and died that very year. I imagine that his memory of the Christmas season of 1911 was full of sorrow as he remembered the times they spent together.
Then, after marrying his second wife, they suffered a tragic death on Christmas day. Their young child, Irving Berlin, Jr, died on Christmas Day 1928. The very next year Berlin lost all his savings in the stock market crash, which likely made the following Christmas season heavy as they still mourned the loss of their son. Berlin once said about writing music, “You can't write a song out of thin air. You have to feel and know what you are writing about.” I can’t help but imagine that the longing for home in “White Christmas” came out of a deeper longing in his heart.
I wonder if that is why the song is so powerful. It is at once filled with this deep longing for what cannot be had and filled with great hope that it will be ours again one day.
My memories of Christmas were a bit like that. I deeply wanted to experience the Christmas depicted in Berlin’s song. I dreamed of it, watched shows about it, participated in small traditions related to it, but at the end of the day it was out of reach. At the same time, there was great joy in what I had, and I imagined one day that I would go back to the US and experience all that it had for me.
Christmas is about longings. Many long for home, their joyful past or their desired future, traditions, peace, justice, joy and love. In the first Century, the people of Israel were longing for their Messiah as they suffered under Roman rule. Today, Christians the world over long for Jesus to return to finish what he started, bringing in the new Creation and making all things right and new.
As I think about my longings to experience snow, the World War II soldier’s longings for home, Irving Berlin’s longings for his first wife and son, I wonder why Christmas gathers these longings the way it does.
I see Christmas as the moment in our annual trip around the sun that best typifies the hopeful words of Martin Luther King Jr. when he said, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Christmas is that turning point in history and in our annual calendar where hope comes into view on, what is for many, a long journey of hardship, injustice, longing, and perseverance.
Maybe captured in that very secular Christmas song, “White Christmas” is just a hint of the Jewish longing for the Messiah and the mourning of being so far from home. Irving Berlin might have related to Mary and Joseph. They had a similar heritage, and both knew what it was like to be driven from their homes. I’m sure as they celebrated the various festivals at a distance, they were reminded of all they loved so much.
As I wait for the King to return triumphant, Christmas comes around the corner and I see a glimpse of what is coming in the ancient story of a baby born, two obedient parents, a few bewildered shepherds and some faithful investors who traveled far to provide for Jesus’ hasty trip to Egypt. My longing turns to hope.
This Christmas Eve, as is our tradition, my wife and kids will watch the White Christmas movie with me and sing the song together at the end of the story. I pray for them as I do for you, that God will meet the longings of your heart this Christmas. Each time that you hear “White Christmas,” ask God to search your longings and fulfill them all with His boundless love. As God meets you in your longings, remember to extend that gracious love to those around you who may be lost in their longings this Christmas. As Bing Crosby said, “Unless we make Christmas an occasion to share our blessings, all the snow in Alaska won’t make it ‘white.’”
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| Screen shot from "White Christmas" scene in World War II |
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| Read more Generous Mind Christmas reflections here! |
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