CHRISTMAS No. 85
Hanns F Skoutajan
The cartoon of Jesus lost in a middle-eastern bazaar looking for a last minute but appropriate gift for a friend who already has everything, rings a bell for me - but not the Sally Anne chimes at the shopping mall.
Its Christmas again and I take this opportunity to wish you, my readers, health, happiness and hope, now and in the months to come.
This is now my 85th Christmas and as always it is a time of reminiscing as I recall the many other occasions of this celebration.
For the first eight years Christmas was in the comfort and security that every child deserves. I was cared for by loving parents and surrounded by the extended family that always descended on us during the holiday season.
Then suddenly in the fall of 1938 it all ended and we became refugees from the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia. It is fair to say that that catastrophe shaped my life and influenced all my thinking.
We were fortunate to find asylum in a so-called refugee camp in Scotland that was nothing like the vast tent cities today in Turkey and elsewhere that provide bare shelter for the thousands displaced by war and political turmoil. Some await settlement to Canada and reunion with relatives while our government dawdles.
Refugees in those days were relatively scarce and our Scottish hosts welcomed us into their homes, their churches and on Christmas turned our mansion, Dollarbeg, into a festive gathering place. I received many gifts of English books and clothes and had my first taste of Christmas fruit cake. Nevertheless there were tears in my mother’s eyes as she remembered her family “back home.”
Christmas 1939, the first wartime Christmas , was as different from the last as night is from day. We had crossed the ocean and become settlers and occupied a log cabin in northern Saskatchewan. It had none of the amenities that we had been used to. However, we were not alone. Once again we were surrounded by our fellow refugees become farmers and on the Holy Night we gathered and exchanged what little we had as tokens of our solidarity and friendship. It is fair to say that all gifts were handmade.
Doubtless the Christmas of 1941 was the most lonely ever. Many of our neighbours including my father had gone east to make a new and better life in the growing war industry or join the forces against our common enemy. On Christmas eve mother and I were totally alone with the box of chocolates that father had sent us from Toronto. Our dogs and cats kept us warm and gave us comfort.
Then once again the scene changed. In the spring we joined my father and took up residence in a small but comfortable wartime house in eastern Ontario. On Christmas we were visited by some of our “new relatives”, people with whom we had shared the hardships of flight and farming. Our little house was crammed to the rafters and laughter and song erupted everywhere but there was also melancholy as we remembered our former home across the ocean. When they departed I felt bereft.
The wartime house at 31 Haig Street in Batawa, 100 miles east of Toronto in the beautiful Trent valley was now my home until I started my ministry in Halifax with a wonderful spouse (and copy editor) and began a family of our own. That family will be together this Christmas enhanced by 7 year old Sophia.
Much cherished, of course, are the memories of celebrating Christmas by candlelight with the six different congregations over the forty years of my ministry.
The past year was marked by some health problems as you who read my blogs will know. As one who has enjoyed good health throughout my life it has certainly made me conscious of “the shortness and uncertainty of life.” It has emphasized the need to use and enjoy what has been given to us. After chemo, surgery and radiation I am doing very well indeed. Will there be a Number 86? Who knows.
The world in which I have found my happy lot is in continuous turmoil . As mentioned earlier thousands have been displaced. The biblical story of the flight of the holy family to Egypt has taken on a new relevance. The cartoon of Jesus with which I began my story is poignant in its absurdity inasmuch as the vast majority of humankind are never without need. Rather than inundating each other with useless or redundant gimmicks we need to make donations in each others’ names to organizations such as Doctors Without Borders who have gone where few have dared to care and help the sick , think Ebola; or Amnesty International who have striven to intercede for and to liberate those incarcerated by cruel dictatorships. And there are many more and not all are so far afield who deal with the victims of an affluent society.
Christmas needs to be a time for prayers however you articulate them as we petition for peace between people of different faiths, cultures and ideologies, but also peace with this much maligned environment which we share with humankind and all creatures.
There is no dearth for gifts to give and no end to needs throughout the world.
May your home be blessed with love and hope.
Spirit Quest Christmas 2014
Previous writings by Hanns can be found at skoutajanh.blogspot.com
