Making Christmas 12/13/2009
 
Last night, Josh and I watched the movie 'The Nightmare Before Christmas', the tale of a Halloween town where a skeleton named Jack stumbles through a door in a tree into Christmas town, becomes inspired and tries to bring this festive holiday into his Halloween town, with some odd (and scary) results.

This story hits home for me, as the CMO staff hang up tinsel and set up little Christmas trees around the ministry site. All those little Christmas traditions seem a little out of place here in Cambodia and the odd googly eyed ornaments are certainly evidence of the Cambodian's own unique spin on Christmas decorations. Although the effort has been made to 'bring Christmas' to Cambodia, I still have difficulty feeling that it really is Christmas because it just looks so different here.

I think the tall Christmas trees wrapped in silver tinsel standing outside a few of the shops downtown must exist out of the Cambodians' observation of a special season that they know to be part of the Western world, and they have decided to take on as well. The absence of the Christmas that I am familiar with reminds me that it isn't traditions that make Christmas.

I like Garfield's Christmas Special as much as the next person (and will probably make my students watch it) and I definitely enjoy Christmas baking and the blankets of snow on homes, the colourful lights and the Christmas music playing every time you turn on the car radio, but these sentiments don't make Christmas. Once we put aside all of these little fancies and traditions, we see God humbly entering the world as a baby, in a barn surrounded by animals. It was the most joyous occasion in history, bringing hope to a hopeless human race. I do miss the atmosphere of Christmas, but I do pray that my heart would revel in the pure joy of Jesus entering this world to save a sinner like me. The world may find it's happiness in traditions and strip Christmas to a meaningless holiday, but as Christians we know that Christmas is about Jesus.

I was planning on going Christmas shopping for Josh at the market until Josh and I talked about Christmas shopping and decided to just forget about it. We both knew that we'd just be surprising eachother with stuff that we didn't really want or need anyway. This is definitely a relief since I know that Josh could pick out something that he likes, much better than I would be able to. Now we could save that money for something that we both actually need or want in the future.

This Friday, Josh and I will be taking a bus to a city called Siem Riep for a 4 day vacation. We're going to explore Angkor Wat again along with the other very impressive temples, and visit the children there. We'll arrive back at the ministry here in Phnom Penh, in time for team of about 25 people to arrive, and to watch the traditional dance and the Christmas play that the youth are going to put on. So, like I said, it may not feel like Christmas, but my comfort of all comforts is that Jesus is my saviour and He is with those who give their heart to Him.

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