Grace and patience

A few different people in the UK have asked if we have a service on Christmas Day morning. If you are British, that is a perfectly normal and reasonable question to ask. If you live in Turkey, it is a question that doesn't need to be asked. Christmas Day is a normal working day here. It also falls right in the middle of one of the regular exam periods for university students - a student friend was not impressed when she realised she had three exams scheduled for Christmas Day! So a Christmas Day daytime service is not even a consideration here - 70%-80% of your congregation wouldn't be able to attend, which would be rather unfair, and because there is no concept of such a service people don't even think of it as something that they're missing out on or would like to do if they could.

There's lots of different directions this blog post could go at this point. I could talk about the impact and influence of Western Christianity here and how we have to be careful because our default position is for our culture to be mixed up with the application of truth to our lives. (And even if you're from a tradition that doesn't really celebrate Christmas and definitely doesn't want to mix symbols such as Christmas trees with any celebration of our Saviour's birth, that too is mixing a particular sub-culture with application of truth). I could talk about how the community of believers here is developing their own Christmas traditions. I could talk about how there is also the effect of Eastern Christianity here and how traditionally the 6th of January has been celebrated as Christmas in Turkey.

But actually there's something else that comes to mind. We've now lived in Turkey for not far off three years. L and I have now spent more than half of the time we've been married living in Turkey. Living in a different country and culture changes you. It exposes you to different ways of thinking and ways of life. It stretches you and shifts your perception so that you see the world through different lenses to people who have lived in one country their whole lives.

So let's make a deal. When you ask questions or make comments that I, in my default position of pride, would inwardly roll my eyes at because the answer is so blindingly obvious, I'll choose to show grace and patience to you because I live here and you don't and when I came here I didn't know the things that are now so obvious to me. And in return, when I start questioning everything that seems so clear and obvious to you and when I make comments that make you seriously wonder if we've completely gone off the rails and maybe even when I (wrongly) sometimes seem like I know better than you because I've lived in more than one country, you can choose to show grace and patience to me. And maybe we'll both grow in understanding that way.

And maybe choosing to show grace and patience is generally an especially good principle to remember at Christmas time, as most people spend time with family members who are very much loved but also can hold quite differing views on a wide variety of topics. That, and don't mention Brexit.

Christmas traditions

It's December so I think I can officially start talking about Christmas now.

This is going to be our third Christmas in Turkey! We're especially excited about this year because in addition to my parents' visit at the end of last month, L's parents are coming straight after Christmas.

But as it's our third Christmas, we've also had time to slowly start to think about how we celebrate Christmas in a country where Christmas is not celebrated. What traditions do we bring from a 'traditional British Christmas'? What can we happily leave behind? As people who believe the amazing news that our Saviour humbled himself by becoming human and being born as a baby, how does that impact how we celebrate Christmas? How do our traditions and celebrations appear to our non-believing neighbours and our believing friends? We started to think more about it last year, then we all got proper flu and that wiped out at least the first half of December. I'm sure we will continue to think and adapt our traditions.

But this year, J is now three and understands a bit more about Christmas (as evidenced the other day when he announced "I think that when it is Christmas, I am going to get a Lightning McQueen [character from the Cars Disney film] duvet cover". He's not.) 

On the 1st December, we had a special breakfast and got all of our Christmas books out. There was also be a new Christmas advent book. This year it's 'The Christmas Promise', part of the 'Tales that tell the truth' series. We already have a couple of books from that series that we love so I had high hopes for 'The Christmas Promise' and it is an excellent book (and it gets bonus points for not mentioning a stable and the fact when the wise men arrive, they're presenting gifts to a small toddler rather than a newborn baby). Last year our advent book was 'Song of the stars' by Sally Lloyd-Jones and we loved that too. 

We now have a fabric Advent Calendar that we can re-use every year. This year I'm planning on putting in some small chocolates and occasional small presents (like a new pair of socks) for some of the days, but we're also going to have some 'acts of kindness' to do on different days, like baking cookies and taking them to neighbours, making a special effort to share our toys, or concentrating on using kind words. And then our Christmas tree will go up in the next couple of days as well. 

Over the last couple of years, I've noticed that as a family, we're making advent a bigger thing. I think there's been a bit of a resurgence of thinking about advent in certain circles in recent years so in some ways we're jumping on that bandwagon. In other ways, it fits the situation here. In the UK, it's rather difficult to avoid Christmas in December and the weeks leading up to Christmas can be jam-packed with activities, so we often need to be reminded to slow down and take time to remember the miracle of the Incarnation. Here, especially outside of certain areas of Istanbul, there is (understandably) absolutely no way that you could know it's December and Christmas will be in a couple of weeks. So advent is becoming an important way for us to build up to Christmas and have time to read and talk about the amazing good news of Christmas.

As for Christmas itself, on the Sunday before Christmas Day there will be a special service to invite visitors too. In Turkey, Christmas Day is a normal working day so our Wednesday midweek meeting will be a special gathering for the believers. It's interesting seeing how the believers celebrate Christmas - some things are clearly borrowed from the West (Christmas trees!) and even here it is a special opportunity to invite people to a Sunday service. Other things are less important e.g. present giving.

We have really enjoyed hosting lots of people, especially international students, for a special Christmas meal close to Christmas Day in previous years in both the UK and Turkey, and as we have quite a lot of students here, both Turkish and international, that is something we'll probably do again - likely on the Sunday afternoon before Christmas. We usually do a traditional British Christmas dinner (although it will be chicken not Turkey on the menu and I think we'll be skipping the pork sausages this year now we're out of Istanbul!), which has gone down well in the past.

As for Christmas Day itself, we're planning for it to be a low key family day. There may be a family Christmas dinner and there will definitely be chicken and stuffing sandwiches at some point. The good news is that I think we probably have a higher chance of a White Christmas than if we were in the UK, and if we drive part way up Mount Erciyes, we are guaranteed to find snow!