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Christmas

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The 12 Days of European Christmas: Filming (and Celebrating) Christmas All Across Europe

ROnce upon a time, for the 12 days of Christmas, we had two busy television crews a-filming: 12 carol concerts, 11 mugs of Glühwein, 10 living mangers, 9 happy families, 8 Christmas feasts, 7 Euro-cultures, 6 mistletoe kisses, 5 alternative Santas, 4 pounds of weight gain, 3 midnight Masses, 2 exhausted cameramen, and a festive hour of great new public television. (Go ahead, sing it.)

During the 2005 holiday season, my crew and I enjoyed producing a one-hour public television special we hoped would be around for many Christmases to come. As it turns out, stations all over the country air this to audiences who have come to think of watching the show as part of their holiday tradition. For a little holiday cheer here on Facebook, I’m kicking off a “12 Days of Christmas” series of video clips from our experience there.

From England to Norway, Burgundy to Bavaria, and Rome to the top of the Swiss Alps, our mission was to get you a seat at the family feast, save you a pew up in the lofts with the finest choirs, and hand you a rolling pin in Grandma’s kitchen as she labored over her best-kept holiday secrets. We joined Romans cooking up female eels, Parisians slurping oysters, Tuscans tossing fruit cakes, and Norwegian kids winning marzipan pigs. Exploring the rich and fascinating mix of traditions — Christian, pagan, commercial, and edible — we learned lots about the holiday festivities we know and love today and packed it into this special program.

Rather than feature a bunch of shopping malls and Christmas markets, our goal was to get an inside look at sacred, traditional, intimate family Christmas celebrations. We wanted to feature diverse cultures whose colorful yuletide traditions would be appreciated by American families whose ancestors emigrated from those places. Our goal: to give our viewers a look at European Christmas through the eyes of a child, a parent, and a pilgrim. This was not a “happy holidays” sales gimmick, but a true celebration of Christmas. As the increasing commercialization of the holiday season has driven me abroad for several recent Christmases, I was happy to take our crew to a continent where people aren’t counting the shopping days left until Christmas.

So, get ready. Starting tomorrow, for the next couple of weeks, we’ll enjoy a daily dose of European Christmas right here.

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Something very new: A Christmas eBook with video.

I just had an amazing experience “paging” through my European Christmas book in its new digital format that actually has photos that come to life as videos. To give your iPad, iPhone, Nook color eReader or Nook tablet a little Christmas cheer, our publisher has just turned our European Christmas book into an eBook with video.

If you’d like to give our new eBook a whirl, visit Apple iBookstore or BarnesandNoble.com. It’s available at the door-buster price of only $2.99. While this all seems so innovative and futuristic today, in a few years, it will be the new standard.

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Our Travelers Raise $64,700 for Bread. Thanks!

Last week we issued a challenge and got a great response. Thanks so much to the 550 travelers who responded to our Christmas fund raiser for Bread for the World. Collectively we raised over $64,000 to help power Bread’s work in explaining to our Congress the needs of our nation’s poorest, homeless, and hungry people. We all want to get our fiscal house in order. And Bread has been very effective in its advocacy work encouraging our government not to balance our budget by cutting vital services to our nation’s most needy.

As part of my personal challenge, I promised to thank those contributing $100 to BFTW with a special Christmas gift (of our European Christmas book, DVD, and CD).  We mailed out 550 thank you packages today so you all should be getting it in a few days. I’d love to have our initiative reach $70,000 for Bread for the World.

There’s still time to join us.  If you’d like to help, donate by noon on December 16.  I’ll pop the three gifts in the mail to you within 24 hours of your donation and you’ll still get it before Christmas. Watch this video to learn more about the gift, and donate directly to BFTW to join us in this important project.

Thanks again and Merry Christmas.

Rick

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Christmas in Managua

Father Fernando Cardenal with Rick (Photo by Trish Feaster)

For Christmas Eve, I gathered with local worshipers in the humble chapel of Nicaragua’s University of Central America under hard-working fans for Mass. As the band set up and the local congregation gathered, a Downs Syndrome child picked up the mic and entertained all with a hearty Santa-like ho ho ho. That unscripted moment kicked things off with a wonderfully human reminder that people around the world are coming together.

A lanky elderly priest was greeted warmly by the congregation. He was Fernando Cardenal, one of the Sandinista priests John Paul II famously wagged his finger at during a visit to Nicaragua back in 1983 for politicizing the church. Cardenal’s trouble-making message was a Liberation Theology message ‘ that Christians are to be more than charitable. They are to ask why there is poverty and to organize to work for economic justice and dignity in the face of hunger and suffering.

The chapel was filled. It was a bring-your-own-maracas crowd, and with each song the place filled with the happy sound of these shakers. The Lord’s Prayer was sung to the tune of “Sound of Silence.” Before the offering plate was passed, a woman stepped out from her pew to remind everyone that Father Cardenal lives very modestly and to assure all that the offering would go to support the church’s work with the local poor.

My favorite thing about a Central American Mass is the fiesta-like “passing of the peace.” Every time I’m in an American church and that moment in the service comes and people solemnly shake hands, I miss the uproar that breaks out at that moment in Latin America. With mariachi energy the band plays while all attending burst into a rollicking commotion of hugging and exchange of blessings. It just goes on and on. Father Cardenal gave me the warmest of hugs. Knowing of this man’s life work as a Christian revolutionary in Central America ‘ and now holding his frail bag of bones body to mine ‘ touched me in a way that caused me to cry. I don’t know why, but it was an emotional highlight of my trip so far.

While that old Sandinista spirit is a little hard to find these days in Nicaragua, Jesus’ “preferential option for the poor” was woven into the sermon, and the Christmas Mass finished with a rousing Liberation Theology carol. People sang “Merry Christmas, justice and liberty. Merry Christmas, a better world without misery and oppression” (Feliz Navidad, Feliz Navidad, en justicia y libertad. Feliz Navidad, Feliz Navidad, un mundo mejor sin miseria ni opresion). As the song progressed through many verses, the congregation lined up to kiss the baby Jesus in Father Cardenal’s arms. The much-kissed baby Jesus was placed into the, until now, empty manger. And the worshipers dispersed into a city soon to be engulfed in a cacophony of firecrackers.