So this is Christmas

I was listening to Christmas music with McKae weeks before she left.
That was in October.
I started a Christmas playlist on YouTube and listened to it all the time.
While we slept.
While we planned for class.
While we worked.
While we waited for movies to load.
Especially while we drank Milo.  Yup.  Milo.  It's pretty good.  Like hot chocolate, but better.

And I lived in Hawaii for 2 Christmas seasons, so I'm used to the "it's-not-getting-cold" Christmas spirit.  You all put on jackets, and I wear a Christmas hat at the beach to make you all jealous.
Yea, I know it worked.
Well, it was just as hot- hotter- in Cambodia.  But it was a lot harder to prepare for Christmas.
Mom would tell me ever time we skyped: "You should get something special from Cambodia that will mean something and be really fun, like a Nativity!"
They don't have Nativities here.
"We went to Opportunity Village and they had a traditional Vietnamese Nativity."
Here is the thing.  Vietnam- don't ask me why, I don't know- accepted Christianity as a nation a very looooong time ago.  I'm not saying the whole country is Christian, because it's not, but there is a large percentage and there are families that have been Christian for generations.
Cambodia is 3% Christian.
3%
That's all.
As opposed to the US where about 78% of the country is some type of Christian.

The Christmas they get is commercial.  The mall and the department stores started putting up Santa hats and Christmas trees and ornaments in window paint as it got closer to the end of December.

We made snowflakes too.  But we sang Christmas songs while we did it.

I was closer than I've ever been to the area where Christ was born.  I was there during the time we celebrate it.  But there is no culture of Christmas music.  It's like the rest of Bethlehem who were ignorant of His birth.  They just went on, not knowing what Christ was or why.
A basic belief of Cambodia is that your life is determined by your past life.  If you're poor it's because your spirit is bad, or you're being punished.  It's hard for us to think that way because we know that isn't true.
Industry takes on so many more road blocks here because someone with an idea isn't naturally imbued with the idea that he can rise above his circumstances.  That idea is changing, but it's still there.  And yes, it still exists even though there are people who fight to live every day.  They struggle, they live on the dumps and collect recyclables to sell so that they can eat that night, they live on abandoned train tracks.  So many know that reading would change their situation, but without the money to even eat, how would they get the money to go to school?
I think that's a huge struggle for Christianity as well.  Christians are readers.  We got our Bibles and our Book of Mormons and our Christian literature, there is a whole genre for Christian writers.
Some missionaries teach people to read as they're trying to bring people to Christ. And that is hard.  How do you convert someone who can't read?  You convert the ones who do and that still leaves the poorest.  Thus- 3%.

But my kids do read. 
And we made a nativity.  And we sang Christmas songs.  And they know Christmas songs- real ones about Christ- in Khmer and in English. 
And I taught them the Christmas story.  We read about it.  And we talked about it.  And we did activities surrounding it.
And it's hard.  It really is.  Christmas is such a simple thing, but only by surrounding myself by it was I able to find the feeling I wanted.

I saw Christmas lights outside a restaurant on my way to the Orphanage near evening one day.  But Christmas lights weren't there to signify the spirit of Christmas.  They were there to draw attention to the place.  It was special, but not for the right reasons.  It was apparent by the girls waiting by the door of the establishment that it was a marketing stunt.
Ooooo evil is so clever.  And always has been.

And so this is Christmas, and what have you done to remember the Savior.

John Lennon?  or Celtic Women?
The struggle to create Christmas within yourself begins there.


It's proof that you can have Santa and sleigh-bells, trees and wrapping paper, cocoa and nutcrackers without the spirit of love that we associate with Christmas.