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Christmas at HomePublished: Thu, 01 Dec 2005 09:00:00 -0500
Christmas is all about God’s love for us. It is about present-giving, how God gave us His perfect Sacrifice. To symbolize this gift from God we give each other presents. Sometimes we forget the true meaning of Christmas, instead getting caught up in the hustle and bustle of the frantic Christmas rush. Here in Tajikistan Christmas is not celebrated nationally. This results from a few factors, one of which is because it is a Muslim country. Since it is a Muslim country, they will not celebrate a Christian-based holiday. Another factor is the influence of the USSR. The Russians didn’t want to keep Christmas, but they liked gift-giving and Santa Claus. So on New Year’s Day they have Santa Claus, or “Grandpa Snow,” as Tajiks would say. I remember as a seven year old going to a New Years Day party for a Tajik school I attended. They had their version of Santa, and they gave the kids candy. When I was seven and eight years old, we lived in a town called Kurgon-Teppa. Christmas was a time to get “foreign goods.” At the top of our Christmas stockings would be an orange and a banana for each of us. This does not seem special, but bananas were about seventy cents each, since they were imported. Additionally, we had American candy: Snickers, Mars, etc. Gifts were small but important to us. These gifts always excited us, and I could not wait to see what I had got from relatives. Recently we lived in England, so things once thought of as luxuries were no longer so. Presents to each other were still small, but we had a variety of things we could get. Christmas season was accompanied by going to High Street, where we could find the major English stores. Now we are back in Tajikistan, and I wonder, “What am I going to buy for gifts?” And then I think of God’s gifts for us, and I am thankful. Yoda says to Luke Skywalker, “Slimy mud hole, my home this is!” This is my home, and I have many fond memories of Christmas here.
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