Christmas in the tropics

It's somewhat bizarre to be in the run-up to Christmas when it's sunny and 28 degrees every day. It should be cold and wet and miserable! On the other hand, it's lovely to be in a country where there's a complete absence of the fevered commercialisation that surrounds Christmas at home. By this stage of Advent the shopping frenzy has been underway for about a month in the UK, but in Rwanda you wouldn't know Christmas was only a few weeks away. Don't get me wrong, I love the food and fun, the presents and parties etc. But it does all get a bit over-the-top. I've been doing my present-buying bit by bit in little craft shops this year, and it's much more pleasant than dealing with the crowds at home.

It's made me see the Christmas story in a new light as well. Even if we do get past the shopping and eating and Santa-Claus-seeing and all the rest of it, and actually remember the real reason for the holiday, we usually imagine a very sanitised version of the Nativity. Yes, there's the manger and stable, but we normally don't think much about what that must have been like - the stench of the cattle, the darkness and the filthy building. We portray Mary as this dignified, saintly figure, whereas in reality she must have been an exhausted teenage mother whose husband was still somewhat suspicious as to how she had got pregnant. We think of the shepherds and wise men visiting and bringing gifts, but forget that shepherds were outcasts and despised, the poorest of the poor, and that the Magi were strange foreigners who presumably didn't speak Mary and Joseph's language and burst in uninvited to their house. We forget that while Jesus was less than two years old, his mother and father had to take him into hiding in Egypt to escape Herod's murderous reprisals, and that they lived there for several years as refugees.

I don't think I ever really thought about what that must have been like, but living in Rwanda - seeing the level of poverty, hearing stories from refugees - brings it home a little more. Yet we celebrate this account of a messy, dirty birth in a grubby little town in Judea, because despite the apparently inauspicious surroundings it was really rather important:

"...to us a child is born,
to us a son is given,
and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called
Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace..."
Isaiah 9:6

Happy Advent!