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By Priscilla Greear & Erika Anderson, Staff Writers
ATLANTA—And so they came — shepherds and the wise men
— to visit baby Jesus wrapped in swaddling clothes lying in the manger.
And in Provence, France, they were joined by the baker, the mayor,
his beautiful daughter, and the thief who courted her but also stole chickens
before repenting and bringing them to the stable. And then there was the
miller, who had quit milling and started drinking before bringing the Christ
child a bag of flour.
“L’histoire des Petits Santons de Provence” (The
History of the Little Saints of Provence) is one French translation of the
Christmas story that Father David Dye, pastor of Mary Our Queen, Norcross and
his wife Chantal, a native of France, told their three children growing up and
now tell their granddaughter. They illustrated it all in a manger scene with
nearly 100 clay pieces. It remains one of Father Dye’s favorite French
traditions. “It’s almost like Bethlehem in France. Everybody in the
village brings what they have to the manger. It’s just a beautiful
story,” said Father Dye. “Everybody ends up in the story kneeling at
the creche (manger), overcome by the Blessed Mother and the beauty of the
baby.”
Father Dye’s favorite French tradition is one of the many
cultural expressions of Christmas celebrated across the ethnically diverse
Archdiocese of Atlanta. Whether it be French-Americans baking a buche de Noel,
Polish fasting on Christmas Eve or Hispanics reenacting Mary and Joseph’s
search for an inn, immigrants gather with others and participate in traditions
from their homelands at Christmastime, enriching and seasoning their holidays
with nostalgia and cultural flavors of their heritage. These traditions are
observed throughout Advent and Christmas. The Christmas season runs from Dec.
25 until the Sunday after Jan. 6, which is Epiphany of the Lord (or in the
United States, a Sunday between Jan. 2 and 8), commemorating the homage of the
three wise men or kings from the East to baby Jesus.
France: A Scary St. Nicholas and Favorite Foods
Chantal Dye recalled how living humbly growing up after World War
II, she spent months before Christmas picking a gift for family “that had
a lot of meaning because you practically made it.” The Christmas tree was
put up around two days before Christmas and was truly glowing—with burning
candles and sparklers. “It was very nice, you could hold the
sparklers,” she recalled. “It was the warmth of the people, the way
we all cared for each other.” She remembers her girlhood memories of St.
Nicholas, the 4th century bishop of Myra in what is now Turkey, who dresses in
red and has a throne. He was feared by youngsters, for he’d spank naughty
children. It wasn’t until Dec. 24, that the more kindly Pere Noel, or
Father Christmas, paid a visit.
Now in the United States, Dye still puts up her tree early in the
season, although she doesn’t light candles on it. Yet she has faithfully
made French Christmas foods — like a lunch of a puffed pastry filled with
chicken, mushrooms, white wine and sauce, and the buche de Noel, a rolled sheet
of cake with a creamy filling. That tasty tradition originated from when past
generations chopped a log from the forest before Christmas and burned it in
their fireplace, distributing ashes around the home for good luck.
Father Dye began celebrating Mass in French in 1995 at Mary Our
Queen. That Mass typically draws 40-75 people. He will conduct this year’s
Christmas service Dec. 30. Celebrating Epiphany has always been part of the
Christmas experience for the French. “It’s always been very important
for the three kings to arrive to see the Christ and on Jan. 6 they bring the
gifts. We are giving gifts to each other in another sense, the religious
gifts.”
After the January Mass, they’ll have a social where
they’ll celebrate Epiphany like in France with a “galette des
rois” (cake of kings), a puffed pastry with an almond glaze with a crown
on top. A bean is baked into the pastry and the lucky bean biter becomes the
king or queen of the party. “I’ve always enjoyed it,” said
Chantal Dye. “It brings people together and you start thinking back and
sometimes you get sad or happy.”
India: Sweet treats, Singing and Dancing With Friends
Juliet D’Souza, who has children ages 4 and 6 and moved to
the United States from India in 1989, has sweet memories of celebrating
Christmas back in India. They have led her to create new ones in her kitchen
throughout December. She cooks for friends and family traditional Indian
cookies and pudding, which in India are exchanged like gifts. This season she
is cooking “typical Christian sweets” like bibique, a pudding with
about 24 eggs, coconut, milk and sugar. “This is the fun part of
Christmas. I started making sweets right on Dec. 8. That’s what gets kids
involved,” she said. “Gift giving is not a big emphasis. It’s
primarily just joking, dancing, music, baking sweets together, just getting
together. (You) may give gifts, or may not.”
D’Souza also recalled melodious memories of going Christmas
caroling door-to-door growing up. “We had carol competition and I remember
each church would compete with other churches.” She wanted to plan a
caroling night this year for children but decided against it because of the
country’s anxiety over the terrorism threat.
Her family on Christmas will gather with at least 20-25
Indian-American friends. Another Indian Christmas tradition, she continued, is
to go out dancing every night from Dec. 25-31, at outdoor parties that can have
up to 10,000 people. The Indian Catholic community in Atlanta, formed about two
years ago, will hold a small Christmas dinner dance on Dec. 22 at St. Jude the
Apostle Church in Dunwoody. They’ll dish out northeastern Indian foods
like Tandoori chicken and rasmelei, balls of curdled milk and sugar. Even Santa
will make a traditional appearance. In India, Santa makes more sleigh stops at
parishes and schools than on house rooftops, she said, so Santa will make a
visit at the Atlanta party.
“It is just getting together and being with a community. We
don’t have family so it’s being with friends. It’s trying to
fill in memories back home,” she said. “We do miss back home because
all our family are back home. Christmas time and Thanksgiving time are the
worst time to be alone in this country for us. It’s so nostalgic. Some
days you even cry. If you’re involved in this group, involved in getting
together, this party, you try to get back what you’re missing from home.
It’s really not taking its place but filling in some of the gaps.”
Mexico: Reenacting The Search For Lodging
Father Abel Guerrero Orta, parochial vicar at St. Joseph’s
Church, Dalton, is from Mexico. He recalled a core Catholic Christmas tradition
in Mexico, with variations in other Hispanic countries, of la posada, held Dec.
16-24. Spanish missionaries brought over this custom in the 16th century, where
they used theatrical representation to teach the nativity story to the Indians.
Each night, people dressed as Mary and Joseph travel with a donkey, leading a
street procession where they knock on the doors of residents asking for posada,
or shelter. Tradition goes they are turned away several times, before visiting
a home whose owners invite them in. Then they sing carols, eat and pray the
rosary. The Christmas Eve posada is in the church, where at the end of Mass
people rock and give a kiss to a baby Jesus doll. A smaller scale posada is
held at St. Joseph’s where Hispanics visit a different home each night for
the festivities and food, including buñuelos, made of sugar, cinnamon
and flour, hot chocolate and a mixed fruit drink called ponche, are served. The
Christmas Eve service is also at the church. “It’s very common and
everybody does a posada in Mexico, each block of houses, and everybody
participates in that,” said Father Orta. “It’s a good time that
the family is together.”
Claudia Alvarado, 16, said that she and her three little sisters
and parents have come to enjoy spending holidays like Thanksgiving and
Christmas at the church, attending Mass followed by a meal. For the second
year, her family is opening their home for one night of the posada.
“There’s really nothing better than really participating in it and
actually kind of being there and living it and reliving it. It helps you learn
more and get into it more,” she said, by contemplating Jesus’ birth.
“It gets us to get together with other families and closer to our family
and we sit around and sing.”
Mexicans like to go to church on Dec. 31 to thank God for the year
behind and ask for a good new one, so St. Joseph’s holds a New Year’s
Eve service, this year at 8:30 p.m.
Poland: Leaving An Empty Chair Open
Father Stanislaw Drzal, SCH, parochial vicar at St. Lawrence
Church in Lawrenceville, recalls with fondness memories of prayer and
celebration at Christmas as a young boy in Poland. One recollection, however,
isn’t quite as sweet.
“It was not easy for me, at the age of seven or eight, to get
up for midnight Mass. That was the most pain and suffering to have to get
up,” he joked.
Father Drzal, who is a member of the Society of Christ, an order
of priests dedicated to serving the Polish people, has been in America for 29
years and often celebrates Masses in Polish for the Polish Catholics in
Atlanta. Unlike the commercial American Christmas, where shopping malls
decorate as early as Labor Day hoping to lure gift-buyers, Christmas
decorations in Poland are not put up until Christmas Eve. And, unlike America
where Christmas decorations are often taken down the day before, Christmas in
Poland lasts until the second Sunday in January.
“In this country, it’s Christmas, Jesus is born —
(then) it’s over,” he said. “It’s hard for a lot of Poles
to understand that. We celebrate the birth of Christ long after
Christmas.”
Christmas Eve is especially significant for Polish families.
Traditionally, a meatless supper is prepared with courses such as Polish
pierogies filled with cabbage and cheese, mushroom soup, and sometimes fish.
“The reason we don’t eat meat is not to torture
everyone,” Father Drzal said. “But to spiritually prepare for
Christmas.”
An especially important part of the Christmas Eve feast is the
sharing of the oplatek. A thin, unleavened wafer, similar to a Communion Host,
displaying the nativity or other religious themes, is broken among family
members to signify unity, affection, forgiveness and reconciliation.
At the start of the Christmas Eve meal, the head of the family
takes the oplatek and breaks it, asking the Lord to bless it. He then shares
the oplatek with his spouse, who shares it with the children and so on, until
everyone at the table has broken and shared of the Christmas wafer. Families
are reunited with those far away when they exchange symbolic bits of oplatek in
letters and greeting cards, as well as with those who have died, if they say a
prayer for loved ones as they consume the wafer.
“When I was a boy I can remember my father sharing his
oplatek with my mother and seeing her tears,” Father Drzal recalled.
“It was something that meant very much to me. It was something very
emotional. It said ‘I am ready to give my whole heart to you.’”
Father Drzal said that at Christmas Eve, there was always one
chair left empty, symbolic of reaching out to others.
“If a stranger came and knocked on the door that night, you
could not believe that they had no one to stay with,” he said. “You
could not refuse them. You always left a chair in case someone came.”
Ireland: Christmas Crackers, Worship and Performances
In Ireland, on the day after Christmas, St. Stephen’s Day,
children go door-to-door, performing for their neighbors. Dressing up in their
parents’ old clothes or painting their faces so as not to be recognized,
the children dance, sing a song or tell a joke at every house, and rewarded
with fruit, or, most of the time, money.
Jessie O’Sullivan, a parishioner of St. Peter Chanel Church
and a native of Loughrea, Ireland, keeps that tradition she loved as a young
girl, alive with her own three children. On Dec. 26, her children go to a few
houses, mostly neighbors also from Ireland or close friends.
O’Sullivan, who has been in the United States for 13 years,
said that keeping the traditions of her homeland in her American home is
important.
“I still have family back there and I know that they are
doing the same thing that I am,” she said. “When my husband and I
first moved here and we didn’t know anyone, it was those kinds of things
that became more important. I want (my children) to have the same traditions
that I grew up with.”
Though the infection of the icicle lights has spread to nearly
every home in America, homes in Ireland are decorated more simply, using holly
with red berries.
“It’s not nearly as commercial,” O’Sullivan
said.
But it is the Christmas Eve feast that the traditions of Ireland
are most present. At the O’Sullivan’s house, as in houses all across
Ireland, Christmas pudding is prepared weeks ahead of time, using Guiness beer.
“Christmas cake is important too,” she said. “Every
family has its own tradition of Christmas cake.”
Christmas crackers are also on the O’Sullivans table. Small
cardboard tubes brightly covered with twists of paper, the crackers produce a
loud popping noise when pulled apart by two people. From the crackers tumble
brightly colored paper hats, a small gift and a piece of paper with a phrase of
a joke.
The most important part of Christmas, O’Sullivan said, is the
religious aspect. She said that her mother, who still lives in Ireland, refuses
to travel for Christmas.
“It is important to her to be in her parish,” she said.
“She will not leave her parish for Christmas.”
Rose Begley, a native of Ireland, recalls with fondness her
childhood Christmases centered around family and tradition.
“On Christmas Eve, all family members gathered in the kitchen
and mother directed all the events, and the festivities began,” she said.
“They gathered all the greenery they could find—hollies, laurels,
etc., to decorate (our) little home. Red holly berries were strung over the
doorways and windows. They lighted homemade green and red candles about three
feet tall and placed them in a large, scooped-out turnip. This was done to
light the way for travelers to Bethlehem.”
During the Christmas season, relationships are a priority in
Ireland.
“If you are out and you meet someone you haven’t seen in
a few years, you would drop everything on your list and go and have a drink
with them,” she said. “That’s one of the nicest things about
Ireland,” added O’Sullivan. “They still have the time to talk to
each other.”
Philippines: Caroling and Early Morning Mass
About 30 adults and children from the Filipino community of St.
Philip Benizi Church, Jonesboro, will also go Christmas caroling at four
nursing homes around Riverdale and Stockbridge all day Dec. 22. This tradition
stems from the way in the Philippines children go Christmas caroling at houses
throughout December, with families usually giving money to them, said Dr.
Cecile Bregman, a St. Philip’s member who moved to the United States from
the Philippines in 1984. Bregman, who has an 8-year-old, said the mission of
this community tradition is to “bring peace and joy through music”
and to teach participating children the dignity and worth of all elderly
persons. “We always tell them, we do this because Christmas is not just
about receiving gifts...but giving your heart, yourself to other people,”
she said.
But one Filipino tradition is a bit harder to continue here. For
the nine days before Christmas Filipinos attend Mass at around 4:30 a.m. She
recalled her American husband’s Christmas surprise the first time he
visited the Philippines with her in December. “He was sort of surprised I
was actually waking him up at 4 a.m. to go to Mass,” she recalled.
“He was shocked.”
In the predominantly Catholic Philippines you won’t find the
video store open on Christmas. Catholics typically feast on Christmas Eve at
midnight and may spend the entire Christmas Day receiving or visiting many
friends and relatives. As “when you’re married to an American you
sort of compromise,” Bregman and her family eat earlier Christmas Eve and
visit close friends on Christmas. And “we believe in Santa (but) not as
much as here where kids really expect a gift from Santa. Over there they are
happy to get any gift (and) usually get one gift from parents and
godparents.” |
