“Christmas-day makes all the days of the year as sacred as itself.”
“He was one who believed with his whole soul in the things that make Christmas precious.”
- George MacDonald
There’s an anonymous quote from Nadiyka’ Gerbish’s book A Ukrainian Christmas, a book I finished this Christmas morning as I sit waiting for the family to get up (along with 8 cups of coffee, two more books, three christmas films and this blog post) that goes, “Light never fights darkness, but overcomes it with its very presence. Christmas does not fight hoplessness- it just comes, leaving no room for despair.”
This is a sentiment made alive in Gerbish’s exploration of Ukranain Christmas Tradition, which is, from the authors own explanation, less a description of facts and more of a lens through which to see and make sense of the Ukrainian story and history. Through this lens it then becomes possible to see the shaping of world history from this perspective of this central space holding that social and geopolitical realities of both East and West in its same soil.
One of the unique things about Ukraine is that it became this fusion of Traditions and beliefs and cultures born from (often competing) cultural realities rolling like a snowball from one side to another, picking up all of these bits and pieces as it goes. This is no more evident than it is in the Ukranian Tradition, with its customs becoming a window into understanding the rest of the world that surrounds it.
And yet its not just the preservation of its own Tradition that matters in this discussion, is the ways this window brings an understanding of that central tension that guides the whole of the human experience. A tension in which darkness is the norm and light is the exception. Where war is the norm and peace is the exception. We tend to miss this in the sheltered spaces of our western traditions where the tensions take on a different shape and concern within our ideological and largely privileged battles for cultural dominance, but we are nevertheless part of this same reality. In one of the book’s most fascinating chapters (Songs and Carols), one of the ways this becomes most aware is in recognizing the stories and contexts behind the songs that we sing, detached as we’ve become from that history. Looking at these songs from that vantage point can be a humbling thing, because it makes one aware of just how much of our Christmas celebrations struggle to articulate the same sense of necessary presence.
I’ve noticed a trend in many of the podcast episodes I have been listening to this season towards deconstructing many of misconceptions about the biblical narrative of Jesus’ birth as well, with a particular interest in dismantling our assumptions about there being “no room in the inn,” a word that isn’t in the text and wouldn’t make sense of the second temple context (Jesus was born in a family home in the great room). The same discussion can apply to the ways we recontextualize the birth narrative into our time and place as well. Here the book A Ukranian Christmas helps us see that in its historical narrative,
“Christmas is a time that reminds us that justice and love prevail, even when it seems that both are slowly dying. It ensures the indestructbility of hope in times of the greatest hopelessness. For as long as we celebrate Christmas, we can neither be defeated nor destroyed.”
As long as we celebrate Christmas. From this end critiquing our own space and own place and time need not be the discarding of our Traditions, but rather seeking to understand them. Yes, we can follow that history in a way that brings us through the soil of Ukraine, but we also are living and embodying our present moment. It is understanding both of these aspects as existing in relationship that can bring the appropriate tension to the surface. Light and dark, hope and despair, war and peace. As the author concludes,
“In times such as the people of Ukraine are living through today, the Christmas story has particular resonance. God sent a vulnerable chid to the world to bring peace, reminding us that genuine peace should also embody justice for the poor, the weary, and the oppressed…. there is hope for that in the mystery of Christmas”
As George MacDonald writes above, Christmas is the beginning of the story of hope, and thus is the lens through which we see all of history. It is the means by which every day becomes as sacred as this day of common and worldwide celebrations, in all of their cultural representations
The Stories of my Life 