If you remember, the first event was mentioned in my last email: we held a Christmas party last Saturday for the kids at the local orphanage, which is run by a number of religious sisters. There are about seventy-five children there, some as permanent residents and some in daycare, and they are all under the age of six. When we first arrived at the orphanage, there was time to play in one of the classrooms full of toddlers. Their favorite activity was sneezing and coughing on us. This wasn’t a bother though; these kids were extremely cute, even with snotty noses. Several of them decided to crawl onto our laps and cuddled up for quick naps.
With this unstructured playtime coming to a close, we were happy to join the rest of the tiny citizens of the orphanage in their recreation area. (A quick note here: this is an attractive, well-designed, modern orphanage. Rid from your minds of the dreary scenes from Oliver Twist. These kids, thankfully, have a decent place to live and learn and play.) With everyone seated around the perimeter of the room, our Christmas program commenced with some of our guys belting out a few Christmas carols. They were of the “Jingle Bell” variety, nothing too spectacular for anyone who has had Music Appreciation 101, but the kids seemed pacified, so I wasn’t going to complain. The program really took off when a group of fifteen tikes countered our attempt at entertainment with a Bolivian Christmas dance. I was impressed! These little munchkins knew how to shake it to a jazzy South American beat! And so back and forth it went: our meek Christmas carols followed by their international midget-jig-like dancing. (FYI: Many of them were dressed in penguin costumes, which added to the effect.) Everyone appeared to be having a good time, that is to say, none of the kids were crying.
Finally, the climax of our party arrived when Santa walked through the door. (It was one of our older, bearded seminarians dressed up in an Arabic Santa suit.) Along with seventy-five wrapped toys, he brought with him a wave of excitement that crashed over the entire room. As he distributed a gift to each child, I could feel the adults in the room losing control of the situation, and the mayhem came to full bloom when one of the religious sisters brought out the cookies and juice. I typically don’t use the word, but “bonkers” is the best way to describe the next twenty minutes. When the sisters shut the party down, the kids went back to their playrooms grinning, and the seminarians went back to the pilgrim house exhausted.
Allow me now to move on to the second event: Christmas morning at the Church of the Nativity. My Christmas morning didn’t really begin until I parted company with my bed around 8:30am. (Why did I arise so late? Our group celebrated Midnight Mass at Bethlehem University the night before, and there was a post-Mass Christmas party hosted by the university faculty. We partied like it was 1999! For a good picture of this shindig, imagine a dozen seminarians, a dozen religious brothers, and a dozen college kids – all doing the electric slide to “Feliz Navidad,” which was played on the acoustic guitar. Now that’s a party!)
In any event, we had Christmas morning free to check out the festivities that were taking place at the Church of the Nativity. My friend Nick and I left for the church around 10am. The place was a zoo! The huge plaza in front of the church was packed with cars and people; the crowded hustle and bustle reminded me of Wal-Mart on the day after Thanksgiving. Outside the church was a huge circle of jubilant Hispanics, dancing to their loud guitar-led Christmas songs that cut through the brisk morning air. Their spirit was contagious and attracted a number of other international pilgrims. The circumference of their circle probably grew to about three hundred people, making a wreck of pedestrian traffic and causing angst for the policemen trying to keep order.
So what was happening inside the church? Pandemonium. Masses in sundry tongues were celebrated in the crypt (which houses the spot where Jesus was born) every half hour. With regard to size, the crypt is comparable a medium-sized bedroom. With polite pushes and saintly shoving, groups of pilgrims were able to sardine themselves into the crypt in order to go to Mass. Four of us from the Mundelein group were fortunately able to make our way into a 10:30am Mass celebrated in English. However, it was difficult to enter into the mystery of Christmas during this speedy celebration of the Eucharist. I felt I needed to take a step back from the craziness of this Christmas scene. Leaving the crypt I spied a somewhat quiet place in a corner of the church that made for a small piece of tranquility. It was there that I slaked my thirst for genuine prayer on Christmas morning.
My reflections have to end here because my time for writing has run out. If you would like to know what we’ve done on a more day-to-day basis, or if you would like to see some pictures of our experiences, check out the “Pilgrimage” link at
By the way, this is my last email from Bethlehem. On Monday we leave Palestine for a week of touring in Galilee. Then we move into our new digs in Jerusalem.
Let me wish you all a happy and blessed New Year! You are in my prayers. Keep me in yours!
Peace in the Middle East,
dave
12/30/2006
p.s. Go Bucks!
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