First Kumamoto Christmas.

Some days, being a missionary is a very spiritual experience, a tough and yet fulfilling job as a witness to God's work in the world.

Other days, being a missionary means dressing up like this:

"Santa-chan kawaii!"
("Miss Santa's so cute!")
-the church ladies

During the postlude of the very moving Christmas Eve service at Kuwamizu (in which I distributed candles and sang in the choir), I was quickly ushered into a Sunday School room and stuffed into that Santa dress, already wearing several layers underneath, to lead the people out to go caroling around the various baby, child, developmentally disabled, and elderly homes of the Colony of Love and Mercy. As I stood behind the doors to enter the sanctuary, a church lady went over my lines with me. After the service was over I was to rush into the sanctuary and in my loudest, cheerfulest voice, declare in Japanese, "Good evening everyone! Merry Christmas! Now we're going to go caroling! Please take one of these--" (hold up a candle) "--and gather at the athletic ground! Let's go!" After repeating the lines back to her three or four times--I kept forgetting to say the all-important "Merry Christmas"--she started to ring some sleigh bells and motioned for me to make my entrance.

I think the congregation was as shocked as I was. We stared at each other for a second before they started to ooh and applaud. I took a deep breath and said my lines in probably the loudest Japanese I've ever spoken. (Fear of making mistakes means I usually speak Japanese in a really quiet voice--my volume that night apparently really impressed Pastor Sumimoto.) And then I ran out the door and while waiting for everyone to gather bantered with some kids who recognized me from Sunday School. (It was mostly just them saying "Laura" and me saying "No, Santa" back and forth.)

We had just sung "Silent Night" at one of the homes when the church lady who'd helped me put the dress over my three layers took my arm and rushed me back to the Sunday School room. "Are you going to be on time to the English service?" she asked. "You should probably go change back into your regular clothes now."

"I'm okay, I'm okay," I said as I was escorted along. "I've got an hour still..." But still I found myself back in the Sunday School room with a bowl of hot pork soup and a steaming cup of green tea, which I gratefully devoured before hopping on my bike to Kumamoto Lutheran for the English Christmas Eve service.

Japan's general disregard for the true origins of Christmas bemused me last year and distressed me this year. I've talked before about how secular Christmas is here. It's more or less equivalent to Valentine's Day in the U.S. in level of importance, widespread unawareness of true origins, romantic associations, and confectionery sales. I said in my Christmas Eve entry this year that Luther is still open for extra classes and club activities on Christmas. And while J-3s didn't technically have to be at school on Christmas Day, we did have to opt out of something scheduled for that day. It left all the (all Christian) native English teachers a little taken aback, to be asked to attend something on Christmas at a Christian school.

The message at the International English Christmas Eve service that night was given by a former J-3 who still lives and teaches here in Kumamoto, and touched on that very point. We all know Christmas is more than Santa Claus and ho-ho-ho and mistletoe and presents to pretty girls. But... in truth, at its very heart, Christmas is not about generosity or spending time with loved ones either, as noble as those things are. The meaning of Christmas is God's greatest gift, a gift you don't get bored with one day later, a gift that plants itself in your heart and stays with you all year round. The meaning of Christmas, at its very core, is the coming of God's Son, the Messiah, Jesus Christ.

I'd had a potential blog entry swimming around my head about my frustrations with Japan's widespread ignorance of the sacredness of Christmas and how Santa and his reindeer fly up the side of the Tsuruya Department Store downtown, but if you want a Nativity set you have to bring it in from another country or make it yourself. But it's not my goal as a missionary to open a market for mass-produced manger scenes in Japan.

The message was a much-needed grounding for me. Jesus' love is so far beyond the confines of an annual 24-hour period, so much deeper than the relative mere warm fuzzies of familial love, so much more powerful and wild than a serene Nativity scene would suggest, so much more generous than anything you could put under a tree, so much more fulfilling than the best homemade Christmas feast. The Son of God! God-made-flesh! He came as a baby, born in one of the dirtiest, smelliest places on Earth because God wanted to reconcile us to Him that much. That's a big deal, yo! A bigger deal than having to report to school on December 25, that's for sure.

It's another bolster to my faith, one of the several I've accumulated since landing here almost 14 months ago. Praise be to God for His love and mercy that was born so long ago and is still with us today. Merry Christmas!

Deceptively placid but still appreciated manger scene borrowed from the eclectic collection
at Kumamoto Lutheran to loan to local families in transit who don't have one of their own.
(Note the extra Magi and Joseph.)

For 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 Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Isaiah 9:6 (NIV)

Advent events.

It's the afternoon of Christmas Eve here in Japan, which for the missionary community is the calm before the storm. Each of the five Lutheran churches in Kumamoto City has its own evening Christmas Eve service tonight, and there's also the late-night International English Christmas Eve Service at Kumamoto Lutheran.

Christmas tree lighting at Luther.

It's really the calm in the middle of the storm, when I think about all the Advent- and Christmas-related activities of the past month or so. Along with three Christmas parties, I've been to two Christmas tree lightings, one at Luther and one at the Colony of Love and Mercy welfare organization attached to Kuwamizu, complete with carols and candlelight. We were given candle holders out of empty soda bottles, made by cutting off the bottom of the bottle, turning the whole thing upside-down, and securing the candle on a screw driven through the cap. It's a pretty neat idea, but of course, the candles melt the plastic pretty easily. Many of the kids spend the entire service tilting the bottle to melt the plastic here and there, making interesting and possibly slightly toxic modern art.

Caroling with the third-years.

On Friday, the last day of school before winter break, I woke up at 3:30am to participate in Luther's annual Christmas caroling, where all the seniors gather in a nearby park at 5:25am and sing songs like "Silent Night" and "Joy to the World" in Japanese while walking back toward the school, the students holding candles in those homemade PET-bottle holders. The local press came out with all their cameras to cover it, which was a little distracting. Still, it was a really cool thing to be out proclaiming the true meaning of Christmas, even with the cold.

My desk at the end of the day. The yellow citrus
fruit is called a yuzu, and was handed to me by
the school groundskeeper as we returned to campus.

After warming up with a delicious breakfast of hot pork soup and rice balls back at the school cafeteria, it was time for the Christmas services. The Luther J-3s (Morgan, Patrick, and me) were tapped to play the Three Wise Men in the school Christmas pageant, and when Patrick wasn't available, they recruited the school's Australian exchange student. We were outfitted in tan shawls as our costumes and spoke our lines in English. ("We Three Kings of Occident are," we'd joked.) The service ended with the "Hallelujah" chorus from Handel's Messiah, which the students had been practicing for the past week, and then afterward was a performance by the handbell choir and a secular Christmas medley from the music-specialty seniors. The whole service took an hour-and-a-half, and since the chapel is only big enough to hold a third of the student body at once, it was held three times. (Our poor chaplain!) That afternoon was staff Christmas worship, and then finally it was time to pack up and go home for winter "break." ("Break" is in quotation marks because the school will still be open all week for club activities and required extra classes--and yes, that means Christmas, too. Thankfully none of it is anything the J-3s have to be at school for.)

Presenting gifts to Baby Jesus.

On the English Service side of things, last Sunday we had the annual children's Christmas pageant. It's my first year helping with the International English Sunday School, but the kids are old pros. They called out the parts they wanted to play before I'd even cracked open the book to review. Our usual Mary, a five-year-old girl, was sick that day, so I stepped in as a last-minute replacement. During the pageant, some of the adults joined in, too. (We had more adult angels than kids, I think.) It was a lot of fun.

And now, after a quick costume fitting yesterday (I'm playing "Santa Claus" tonight for the kids around the Colony of Love and Mercy--this should be interesting) it'll be time to crown all these activities with a celebration of the true "reason for the season," a reason most Japanese people are actually almost entirely unaware of. Please pray for the Good News to be spread by churches around the country tonight.

I'll close with the words from the postcards Kuwamizu has been distributing to invite people to tonight's service:

"I humbly offer you this love."

You often hear, "I want to spend Christmas with someone special."

But, in fact, the one who says this is neither me, nor you.

It's God who says it.

This Christmas, please come to church.

"I want to spend this Christmas with you," God says, and is waiting for you.

Kuwamizu sanctuary, decked out for Christmas.

But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord."
Luke 2:10-11 (NIV)