Happy Big Day!

A very ‘Shubo Boro Din’ (literally ‘happy big day’) or Merry Christmas came to our little compound. A hot pink bamboo lighted star was hung from our roof, several small trees adorned with lights, and the front of the cafe filled with a few precious decorations and strands of lights. The festivities started a few days before Christmas when we took the kids caroling. Door to door all over campus we sang a few English carols and read Christmas bible verses. Apparently when you sing at people’s doors, instead of giving you something tasty, here they’ll give you taka(money)! So with all the taka the kids got we bought them little sweets(like super wet donut holes) and ice cream J

Two days before Christmas I REALLY went caroling. I was surprised at how hard-core Bengalis are about their caroling! First, you should know that Bengali carols are about 3 or 4 times as long as English carols. Secondly, Bengalis love to dance with their carols. So, the leader is in the middle with a harmonium or drum singing phrase after phrase of these long songs and we are dancing around him in a circle echoing the phrases. We start off down the path just outside our compound and in about 5 mins we reach our first destination. Singing/dancing 2 or 3 carols here it is nearly 20 mins before we move on to our next destination!  The 2^nd place is where we encountered a Hindu man doing his own worship; while we were caroling and dancing around the circle he was walking around behind us burning incense and muttering things under his breath…maybe he was worried one of his gods wouldn’t like our songs? Or maybe it was just his way of joining in with us. 20 mins later we left our incense man for one of our village schools. By the time we were done there it’d been about an hour and the puffed rice we got there tasted good J I thought now we’d been caroling for a bit, collected a bit of taka, ate a little puffed rice, we might be headed back? Apparently we had just begun! We went through village after village stopping in every courtyard and open space we could fit to dance a few songs before moving to the next group of mud huts. In this culture there doesn’t seem to be any curfew courtesy….11 o’clock at night they are still pounding on tin doors until sleepy faces finally emerge to watch us sing and give a few taka! After several hours of walking and dancing in the cold, many were complaining of sore feet but nothing was going to stop our leader until we had sang for every hut in every village near our campus! It wasn’t until 4 hours later we finally returned home and scurried to our warm beds to enjoy a little rest. These people took caroling to a whole new level for me!

Christmas eve day we gave out blankets and jackets to some of the surrounding villagers that really needed it(it actually gets cold here and the villagers suffer so much with no blankets or jackets). Then our kids all got a special Christmas Eve treat, a puffed rice and molasses ball(modified rice krispy treat) which they enjoyed thoroughly! As a special vespers that night the kids did a Christmas play we’d been working on with them, it was cute J Then, as hard-core as ever, the Bengalis went caroling AGAIN! Collecting still more taka and dancing at every hut around. I enjoyed my one and only packet of hot cider to celebrate this unique Christmas Eve J

Our Charlie Brown christmas tree :)

Issac's puffed rice molasses ball(Christmas Eve treat)

Then it was Christmas Morning, the happiest morning of the year! The kids knew it and couldn’t help showing it through all their huge smiles and sparkling eyes. It was an extremely unique Sabbath, not only being Christmas day, but also my first Christmas spent on the other side of the world with my Bangla Hope family. Special treats for all, extra treats for the kids, and priceless faces of the children when they received or gave a little gift. Christmas night we had a program with several special numbers; 3 guys singing ‘We Three Kings’, an English carol by the older kids, a Bengali carol by some staff, and an impromptu Silent Night by all the foreigners present! They turned the lights off, handed us candles, then in the middle of the song began spraying foam snow on us!  I was so surprised I finished the song half-laughing! There is no snow in Bangladesh, so the kids were quite perplexed when this foam landed on them and everyone was telling them it was snow J Grammy and Mr. Waid, who dressed as Santa Clause, handed out gifts for EVERYBODY, staff and kids alike. From clothes to cars and dolls and purses and pens, the kids could not contain their excitement, “Kelsey teacher! Look at! Look at what Grammy gave!” then they would pull out everything from their ziplock bag and show each treasure one-by-one. The excitement was contagious and I found myself having one my happiest Christmas experiences right there with those kids, marveling alongside them at the joy such simple things can bring. In a world with such advanced and complicated gadgets and ideas, it does not seem often enough we’re able to experience such pure joy from the beautiful simplicities God created. This Christmas has reminded me that true happiness often comes from the simplest things of life.