Christmas in PNG

Christmas in the remote highlands village of Kiari, Papua New Guinea is lovely. You should see our breathtaking mountain vistas, framed by poinsettias that grow to 20’ or more. Although it’s technically summer here in the Southern hemisphere, at 6500 feet, it’s not hot, and being so close to the equator we don’t really get the extremes that make it feel like summer or winter anyway. Rainy season begins in earnest about this time of year, and the chilly mist and rain actually remind me a little bit of winter in Old Virginny. I dearly love Kiari and honestly feel more at home here than anywhere, but I would have to say that the actual holiday is very much stripped of many things that make it “feel like Christmas” to an American country girl like me.

There truly are many “Christmassy” things I get to enjoy that the “real” missionaries of the past never would have even dreamed of being possible. From Thanksgiving on, we listen to all kinds of beautiful Christmas music in our home, even more so this year, now that internet radio is an option. When we do a supply trip, we anticipate getting boxes from loved ones and supporters, and if certain stores are stocked, we can get an amazing variety of American type groceries, making it possible to do a lot of Christmas baking and to enjoy a traditional dinner. And did I mention that recently we have even been able to do video calls from our home in the bush? Suddenly our family on the other side of the world is not so very far away after all.

But once you step outside of our house, Christmas here is quite different, and you have to adjust your expectations quite a bit if you don’t want to be disappointed. After all, this is PNG, not Old Virginny! Not that Christmas isn’t observed—actually, the whole country basically shuts down from sometime in November until the new year, and it’s everyone’s favorite time to return to their home village and spend time with family. The school year is finished, and everyone is excited to have their students home from boarding schools.

Christmas week is the favorite time of the year for a bung (or gathering), roughly equivalent to a Bible conference or revival meetings in the States, with multiple services a day. The highlight is always a mumu (where food is steamed in a pit), especially if a pig is on the menu!

And… you should see the decorations. The Saturday before Christmas, everybody heads out to the “big bush” (rainforest) to gather all sorts of greenery and flowers to decorate the church. They come back and stick little broadleaf trees in the cracks between the floor boards and tie various ferns and flowers to the benches, so that when you walk into the building you feel like you are in the woods! The front porch is decorated in a similar way with wild bamboo for garlands.

The latest thing is to decorate with food, so they put up poles with banana bunches, squash, corn, beans, sweet potatoes, taro, yams, tapiok, and all manner of other things tied to them. Of course, that means that someone has to stand guard so the food doesn’t disappear during the night. It’s great fun for a bunch of guys to camp out and have a blast together while they keep an eye on things.

But there are none of the “events” like we are used to in the States. No cantata, usually not even any kind of Christmas program, and definitely no beautiful, live orchestral music. The closest thing is the “brass band” that was all the rage for a while several years ago. There was actually nothing brass about it, just a bunch of buckets with rice bags tied over the tops, and quite an impressive “drum major!” Nobody exchanges gifts that I know of, and I miss the warm “holiday cheer” and spirit of extra kindness and generosity that I remember in the States this time of year.

Since arriving here 10 years ago, God has opened my eyes to the fact that my love for Christmas - as much as I hate to admit it or even see it in myself - has had very little to do with Christ coming to earth, which is obviously what it’s all supposed to be about. I constantly have to check my heart and make sure that it really is the reason for the season that I love, not just one culture or another’s celebration of it.

So, as much as I enjoy decorating my home (wild bamboo actually looks a lot like pine needles as it dries!); as much as I revel in Christmas baking, beautiful music, and special memories with my husband, children, and coworkers (who have basically come to count as family); and as much as I have come to enjoy the Christmas traditions of Kiari, every year I am convicted of my need to go back to square one and “think Bible” about Christmas.

The biggest thing that has stood out to me and become such a comfort is that Christmas is actually all about NOT being at home. It is about Jesus leaving His Father and His heavenly home; leaving the place where His will was always done, like He would teach us to pray for it to be done on earth (Matt 6:10); leaving the unceasing praise and adoration He enjoyed in Heaven to come to a place where I am sure the shepherds’ and wise men’s homage was a startling exception, rather than the rule in His little life. As much as we all love babies, we just don’t go around treating them quite like that!

Can you imagine the incredible humility and self-abasement that it took (Phil. 2:5-8) to become fully man, as well as fully God? To take on flesh and come live with us (Jn 1:14) after being pure Spirit, in the form of God, enjoying equality with God in Heaven?!

Can you imagine how demeaning it must have felt to suddenly have to deal with bodily fluids, for instance? ‘Scuse me if that is a little shocking—it’s something pretty much only moms and medical people have much to deal with in the Western world, but was and is much more widely encountered in other cultures, such as the one Christ was born into.

Can you imagine what it would have been like to experience the huge effects and distraction of hunger and sleep deprivation on His spirit, not to mention having an adversary take advantage of things like that (Matt. 4, Luke 4)?

According to Hebrews 10:5, God prepared a body for Him – and as we all too well know, our bodies are not willing slaves to our spirits. Like all of us, He had no small task as its slavemaster to pummel it into submission (1 Cor 9:27).

What must it have been to know, like none other, that as a voluntary descendent of Adam, He would bear some of the penalty of sin even before the Cross, all His life long! What it must have been like to live as the only perfect Being among all the fallen ones, taking part in sin’s consequences right along with them: working hard, suffering pain and sickness, and dealing with practical frustrations and difficulties?

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And He didn’t just enter a body, but a baby’s body in a mother’s womb in a poor family,who actually was not at home either when He was born. I have thought about that a lot when we had to travel and camp out near one hospital or another for the births of each of our 5 children, 3 of them in unfamiliar areas of PNG where we didn’t know anyone.

Mary was amazing, probably even in her day and setting, not just being away from home and family, but in a stable… except, wait a minute, does the Bible actually ever say it was a stable? We know there wasn’t room in the inn and she wrapped Him in strips of cloth and laid Him in a feeding trough. Maybe my imagination is running a little wild, but I wonder if it could have even been out of doors. Regardless, it makes the various economy guesthouses we have stayed in look really good! But having had my babies in various places and using a basket or a couple of armchairs pushed together for a baby bed still makes me appreciate her creativity with what she had.

Not only this, but He knew that He would be despised and rejected; that He would know the type of pain and grief associated with relationships with a fallen human race. Just take a look at Isaiah 53. Really, go look – maybe this is actually one of the most pertinent Christmas passages of all to meditate on this time of year, along with, say, the book of Hebrews!

Our Lord, our Christ, our Savior came to earth, not just as a naïve new missionary who had no idea what he was getting into, but as omniscient God fully knowing all that was coming. In fact, every single detail was His own intentional plan, and He would steadily, purposefully proceed to fulfill it completely.

And He did not consider this a dreadful fate, but an honorable mission. “For the joy that was set before Him” (Heb 12:2), He endured a lot even before He reached the cross, and that was definitely not the first time He chose to despise shame. He had something so much greater in view! Only He could attain perfect righteousness in the place of all humanity, and only He could trade that for all of our sin and then pay its penalty in full.

And that sort of brings me full circle. Because this Christmas, I am an odd mix. Maybe you are too, whether our specific circumstances are similar or worlds apart.

As many “nomads” like me can testify, cross-cultural experience can so fundamentally change you that you will never feel completely “at home” again until Heaven. You’ll never completely fit in where you are, and you don’t fit in at home anymore either. Wherever “home” is. And we have to learn to be okay with that. Hard as it might be sometimes, is there really anything at all the matter with being a stranger and pilgrim? Is it maybe even a healthy thing?! Don’t we as Christ-followers have something much greater in view?!!

Let’s not forget the joy that is set before us.

Let’s not forget our Christ, who was NOT at home for Christmas, but who left home for the greatest reason in the world.

Let’s think long and hard on those things and just let them work genuine wonder and gladness in our hearts, that we would be so privileged to be a part of God’s working right here, right now. Even… especially… if we happen to be in a place where you can positively feel the thick darkness sometimes, and the people are proud and hard and treacherous and so desperately lost.

Oh, it just brings me to tears to think what a tremendous, humbling privilege and comfort it is to have even just a teensy, little taste of what that first Christmas was like for our Savior. Let’s give thanks and praise to our God, just as He made us to do, this Christmas and always!