Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

What I wore for our Christmas English classes at Iitomi Elementary school. My kids thought it was great!
Merry Christmas everybody! I hope that it is a glorious celebration of our Lord Jesus Christ’s birth for all of you. It certainly has been a great Christmas here for me, even though I am far from my immediate family and my good friends in the U.S. I spent Christmas Eve and Christmas day with the part of my spiritual family that is here in Japan.
At Mito Church of Christ there was a beautiful Christmas Eve candlelight service and afterwards a hand-bell concert. I enjoyed immensely singing Christmas songs in Japanese right along with many Japanese and foreign brothers and sisters and the hand-bell concert afterwards was absolutely stunning! Then, all of us foreigners who did not return to our respective countries for Christmas stayed the night in two separate apartments (one for the boys and one for the girls of course) together so that we could bring in Christmas by opening up the stockings that we stuffed for each other. It certainly wasn’t the Christmas I have experienced for the last 23 years with my family, but it was a blessed, enjoyable one regardless. God is so good!
Christmas here in Japan is nothing but a commercialized, materialistic holiday that has quite a different meaning to those here in Japan. If you ever want to see Christmas without Christ, come to Japan (and then even the atheists in America would think twice about all the crap they are trying to do in taking Christ out of Christmas). Anyways, the main concern of most single people is who they will go on a date with on Christmas Eve (it’s shameful to not have one on this special night). Christmas morning, Japanese children wake up to a present on their pillow, where Santa had sat it. Families gather and have a Christmas cake (I saw them in the store and do you know how much they are? The cheapest is about $25!!) and eat fried chicken (Kentucky Fried Chicken was REALLY busy today). Christmas is just not a special a holiday here like it is in many other countries around the world, but New Year’s certainly is.
I did a Christmas Power Point presentation to 6 classes of fifth and sixth grade students at one of my elementary schools about Christmas in the U.S. It was full of pictures and as many facts about our Christmas as I could cram into it (it was a good 45 minute presentation). It might interest you to hear some of the questions I was asked afterwards:
Was Christ a boy or girl?
How old is Santa Claus?
What does Santa do if there is no chimney?
Can Santa bring you a real baby if you want one? A handsome boyfriend?
Will Santa bring you gifts if you have been bad?
Was Santa rich?
Elves help Santa make presents?
Santa has a wife?
How do the people who put up so many Christmas lights afford the electric bill?
You put Christmas presents under the tree?
What does a girl do when she doesn’t want to kiss the boy who holds mistletoe over her head? (I told them they should run away very fast.)
You don’t eat Christmas cake in America?
Are there boy angels?
How old are angels?
Some of these questions are understandable questions, while others show differences in celebration. And the others, well the others show the thing that saddens me most – the serious lack of knowledge of their God and Savior. People don’t know about God and Christ here – but isn’t that why God brings so many of His believers here to Japan?
Onto the next subject. I will say Happy New Year’s now because I won’t be writing any blog for about 11 days (I know that’s typical anyways). I will be in Thailand! Yup, I’m going to Bangkok for three days, a tropical island named Koh Chang for five days, and then to Taipei, Taiwan (where I’ll get to meet up with my good friend Gary Kuan) for two days. The 8 of us who are going will leave bright and early at 5 in the morning tomorrow.
I am very much looking forward to it. But I want you family and friends back in the U.S. who actually read this blog to know that I am sad that I couldn’t spend these special holidays with you. I love you very, very much and I wish that I could bring all of you along with me to experience this.
Please pray for us and our safety. Again I will say MERRY CHRISTMAS and HAPPY NEW YEAR!