Christmas Morning In The Kingdom

A voice with a sharp tone and a British accent calls out from our small rattan dresser, “The time is seven A.M. It is time to get up.” As I stir from sleep, I reach over to shut off my accented cell phone alarm.

It is Christmas morning.

My wife gets up and turns on the bright fluorescent light over our heads and shuts off the fans that kept us cool all night long. As my senses begin to come to terms with a new day, I hear the sounds of squawking roosters, barking dogs, wailing children, grinding motorbikes and Khmer karaoke.

It is Christmas morning. In Phnom Penh.

We have been blessed to share this precious time of the year with many who are dear to us. My father and sister made the trek across the ocean to join us for two weeks, and Melissa’s close friend from high school days is here today, joining us for a breakfast of M&M pancakes and Dunkin Donuts coffee (prized gifts sent from a faraway place). We’ve lit a few candles, though the sunlight has already overtaken our living quarters. A small plastic tree with a single strand of lights warms the corner of the room, next to a dusty windowpane over which my wife has made cut-outs of two very familiar words:

“Merry Christmas.”

When we finish breakfast, we will busy ourselves with the errands of a run-of-the-mill work day in this place. Though tinsel and Santa Claus are beginning to make their way into various stores and businesses throughout the city, no one breaks for Christmas. Builders will build, farmers will farm, and I will go to school to teach a three-hour class later this afternoon.

But it is still Christmas day, isn’t it?

Many of the familiar sights and sounds of the holiday season seem so distant. There is no snow, there are no carolers, no candlelight services, and no nativity scenes in the front yards of houses (probably because there are no front yards). But it is still Christmas.

We grow up learning to identify ourselves with all these traditions until it seems to us that they ought to be every person’s natural inclination during the month of December. But what I am learning this Christmas, as most of these inclinations are destined to be unmet, is that the joy, hope, and peace of this holiday is not found in the annual festivities that we have long established; the original Christmas came in the night, in the middle of storms of oppression and fear and chaos.

There is a certain austerity to the hymns we sing during this time of year, and I wonder if we have become so enchanted by their melodies that we sometimes forget their choruses:

“Long lay the world, in sin and error pining…”

“O come, O come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel…”

“He comes to make his blessings flow

Far as the curse is found,

Far as the curse is found…”

We wake on Christmas day as a minority. As we wish one another a Merry Christmas, all around us the holiday comes and goes virtually unnoticed. As we read the great story of the redemption of man, people all around us go on in darkness, clinging to the vague hopes of a monk’s incantation, or of an incense stick inside a spirit house. And as we give thanks to our Father for the great gift of his Son, fathers and sons and mothers and daughters live out their days quite aware of the world’s condition before Christmas—a world yet pining in sin and error, yet captive and cursed.

As the heat rises over Phnom Penh, as the traffic builds and the problems pile up, I remember that, just as our Savior entered into a foreign and chaotic world, so we have entered this place. But we come to proclaim that for those dwelling in darkness, a light is ready to dawn. We come ready to share glad tidings of great joy, for all the people.

As this Christmas day continues on, we will not have as many opportunities for carol-singing, gift-unwrapping, or candle-lighting. But we will have many opportunities to share our joy. This joy is heaven’s gift to us at Christmas, and it is our gift to our surrounding world.

Come, let us adore him.

-Ryan