Feast and then Famine...

This year provided Russian Lutherans with the best chance to celebrate Christmas. The reason that I say this is that statistically speaking (this according to my British friend who works at the language school), only 6 % of Russians celebrate Christmas on Dec. 25th, most of those being Catholic. As I mentioned in a previous post, Russian Christmas is January 7th. Thus, unless our Western Christmas falls on either a Saturday or Sunday, it is difficult to attend church--as it isn’t a recognized holiday. Well, since this year it was on Sunday, the church was packed with a total of 17 people (which reminded me of two things: first, the “fields are ripe for harvest”--John 4:35, and that my perspectives on what constitutes a “packed church” certainly have been adjusted!). It was actually a very cool service, as we sang several songs that I knew the tune to: “Silent Night”, “Hark the Herald Angels Sing”, and “O Little Town of Bethlehem”, which provided us with some familiarity within the service.

Well, as it happened last Sunday was Jan. 1st, which provided a glimpse at the other side of the coin. By far, New Year’s Eve/Day is really the big celebration for most Russians, as it was the celebratory point of emphasis during the Soviet Era. Well, when we got to church 2 minutes before the service started, Julie, her mom, David and I were the first to arrive (that is, besides Pastor Sergei and the organist). In fact, the service started with just us—all Americans—there. It was, in fact, rather strange, very sad, and yet funny at the same time.

Perhaps you can understand the first two emotions, but may be thinking: “Funny?” Well, when Pastor Sergei began the service by saying his familiar introduction, “Today is the first Sunday in January, where we celebrate the New Year, etc.” (which he does every Sunday) Julie and I, realizing that he was going to be speaking to 3 Americans at varying levels of non-understanding of Russian, saw Pastor look at us and give a bit of a grin. I, for one, thought that he must be thinking of the peculiarity of this situation—as I was. His little grin was all that it took, and Julie and I just started laughing. Of course, isn’t it true that when you are trying hard NOT to laugh (in school, church, a business meeting, or something like that), you always end up laughing harder cause you know you really shouldn’t, that you are an adult, that it isn’t proper—all of which just adds fuel to the fire. Thankfully, two things happened almost simultaneously, a few seconds later: we began the first hymn which refocused us on worship, and second, a Russian woman walked in—which meant that it wouldn’t simply be Americans and the organist there, thereby eliminating most, if not all, of the oddness of the situation.

Well, after the service, the lady told us about how hard it was to get to church and why she was late: none of the mini-buses, and only a small percentage of regular buses, were running today, as it was a holiday. Thus, she found it difficult to get to church. While that was indeed true, I think the fact that it was New Year’s Day was the biggest reason why people weren’t there (I will talk more about New Year’s in another post).