Christmas Day- A Photo Essay

This is a photo essay about our Christmas. It all started off at about 6:00 in the morning. Patty and I got up before the kids and sat around the Christmas tree drinking hot chocolate. About 7:00 the sounds came from the girls room and the girls let us know they where awake. Thus began our Christmas day. Here are the photos of the day.

Waking-up, reading Christmas Story, and Seeing Baby Jesus

Stocking Stuffers
The Tree!
Eating muffins and opening presents

One of my gifts from Patty

Diva Ella

Patty with a beautifully wrapped present, and her watch on that we got her!

Carey catching Daddy

'Give me more presents' John looking for his big present from Patty

John opening up his guitar, the big present

Our posed Christmas family picture.

Our Crazy Quilt of Christmas Traditions

As a young boy, I grew up in Northern Indiana. My family lived near Amish country. Many summers my grandmother would take me to Shipshawana. One of the things that she loved to look at were the crazy quilts. They are hand-made and full of bright patterns and different colors and fabrics. Basically a crazy quilt is mismatched pieces that form a beautiful whole. This is what our Christmas Tradtions have started to mimic. The crazy quilt of our Christmas tradtions is made up of some African holiday fun, family ideas, missionary ingenuity, and American classics. This assortment of activities have become a beautiful pattern to our family.

The No-Snow Man-

One of the the newer tradtions that our family has started has been making a snowman. In West Africa??? Yes, making a snowman.
Patty read about this idea in Family Fun. Just a few cardboard boxes, cotton batting, pom-poms for eyes (no coal here), add an African kente strip for a scarf, and voila! Our Ghana Snowman.

The Cookies, Snacks, and Candy Making

Patty grew up in a family that loves different kinds of holiday treats, and let's just say my own German roots love getting fat around the holidays, so it has led to tons of baking with the children around the holiday season. One thing that makes many of these things so special is that they are not available here in Ghana, or are too expensive to make but once a year. At the beginning of December the aprons and ovens mitts are donned and flour covers little faces. The girls love to help make each treat. The list of sweets consist of sugar cookies (cut out and decorated), Mom M's special thumb print mints, heath-bars, .payday bars, peanut butter fudge, white chocolate pretzels, and scotcharoos. We even added another one to the list... chocolate-covered cherries. After a few extra pounds and ten or twelve sugar buzzes, the treats are made and consumed!

Christmas Hut-

This tradition was given to our family from Ghana. In the villages of Ghana many children build Christmas Huts. On the 24th of December the children will cut down Nim Tree and Palm Branches. They then place four large branches in the ground to act as support beams. After the support beams are up, branches are placed for rafters, and the children begin to weave the leaves and sticks into walls for their hut.

Many children will spend hours decorating their huts. They use flowers, feathers and other beautiful things to complete the house. In many village the people decided which house is the most beautiful and praise the children that work the hardest.

The belief is that Mary and Joseph will visit the village on their way to Bethelehem and will pick the nicest Christmas Hut to stay in. The children also get the joy of sleeping outside. Most families allow their children to sleep in their Christmas House all night.

Our family has tried to adopt this practice. There are no Nim trees around our house, and the compound that we live in is concrete, so there is no way to dig holes for our support beams. These facts mean that our family has to improvise. We cut down palm branches for the front of our house and then construct a hut, Indian teepee stlye. The kids love it! They decorate it with flowers and play in it all day on the 24th. They do not sleep in it, but they love this African tradition that we have added to our holiday season.

Manger and Baby Jesus-

Christmas time is very exciting, but also very different from our normal schedule. Patty read about this idea and felt that it would teach good lessons and also help the girls to learn to control themselves at this hyper festive season.




At the beginning of December we set out a manger - a small open box wrapped in brown paper. Next to the box is a large bowl of local broom straws (our hay). Each day the children know that they are being watched. If they perform an act of kindness or are obedient right away then they get the chance to put a straw in the box.

We tell the children that the box is going to be like a manger, and on Christmas day we will have a baby doll that will represent baby Jesus. If they are kind and obedient, then when Jesus comes he will have a soft, nice bed, but if they are selfish and disobedient then he will find a cold, hard bed.

The girls really liked this. Many times Ella would say to Carey, "You better be nice, or Jesus' bed will be hard!" Their faces would light up when they had the chance to put straw inside.

On Christmas morning before our family read the Christmas Story, the manger was laid out on the couch and the girls were able to see the doll wrapped in swaddling clothes.


Our Gingerbread House-

First, I have to say that graham crackers are almost impossible to find in Ghana or are very expensive, so that is the reason that our family has used gingerbread and not graham crackers to build our house. Second, gingerbread is really not that hard to make and is a bit easier to use then graham crackers. Anyways, each year around the time our family makes our trip to Accra, we begin to collect candy and treats to decorate our gingerbread house with.

Each year the gingerbread house is made and then given to the children that attend a party that we have for friends. The house is "ooed" and "aahed," and then eaten. It normally takes only about ten minutes for the whole thing to be wolfed down.

These things together with many more little things make up our Crazy Quilt of Christmas Traditions. Tradtions are a wonderful thing to have in the family. Whether they are simple things like opening a present the night before Christmas or having large parties, no matter what a family does, make it special. Like Matt Sexton once said, "It is easy to be boring!"

I hope this post finds each of the readers enjoying their after-holiday glow and able to remember great tradtions that they took part in this holiday season.

Decking the Halls

Living in a tropical climate, we have learned that it is important to deck the halls early. Luckily I grow up in a family that decorates the day after Thanksgiving. We have continued this tradition as missionaries here in Ghana. Our decorations make their debut the end of November and stay around until New Years... though we might even extend this if we can manage it!

This year we had our greatest challenge, two Christmas trees. The second year that we were in Ghana, our Christmas tree (a ultra slim blue spruce pine from Target's after Christmas sales) was sent to us and it has been the center piece of our Tropical-Winter Wonderland ever since. This year we are able to buy a massive Christmas tree from a local store. It towers to a height of ten feet (I had to talk Patty out of the 12 or 14 foot models, since they would not fit in our apartment).

The girls jumped out of bed at about 5:30 in the morning jumping on our bed wanting to decorate. Out came all the boxes. Luckily because of a trick that I have learned (thank you Mr. Allen) there where no tangled lights. This is very important, though we do not put them outside I do want the house covered in lights. If we hung out all those different color lights outside, all the neighbors would think we have started a bar, since they are the only people that do that here in Ghana.

After getting up the two trees and stringing lights the girls put on my Santa Claus outfit they bought me last year for Christmas. Thy must have thought I needed to loss some weight. Just before lunch we started all the Christmas music. Thanks to Amazon mp3 online we where able to get all the classics this year, like: "All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth", "Santa Baby", "I Yust Go Nuts at Christmas", and "Michigan Christmas". Once we hit the play button these tones ring through the house from Thanksgiving to New Years.
We try to mix in our local flair with our Western Christmas. The girls love when we decorate our two elephants as Mr. and Mrs. Claus. We even bought a large hand carved Africa Father Christmas.

The center stage of our family room is my wife's collection of Nativities. This photo is of a Ghanaian Nativity that we bought in the capital. Currently she has 17 different Nativities, they come from Ghana, Lebanon, Kenya, America.

When we finally have the whole thing finished on Friday night, we are tired but happy. For the next month we get to enjoy the tinkling lights and holiday cheer. As our missionary friends told me last week, "there is just something special about Christmas on the mission field".

Forever Father Christmas!

A day in the life of an African missionary is something wonderful, joyful, but also odd. You have the greatest life and greatest mission in all the world. The odd part is how you stand out. When you are a missionary, that happens to be white, in a sub-Saharan African country, you are an oddity. For example, of the 3 million people that live in Kumasi, maybe 500 of them are non-African. By this I mean, they are the Lebanese, Chinese, Indian, European, or American - all the groups that make up the 'bronifuo' (this is the term for all foreigners). The thing that really makes the missionary different is how he interacts with the people. All other foreigners are here on business, and personal interaction is simply that - business. But the missionary's job is people, and this fact takes him to the local people everyday.

Now this said, you have to understand that most children here do not see white people that often. Also, the average adult rarely interacts with a white person. So, the broni (white man), just like all things in the world that are little understood, has ascended in the mind of the average African to the level of a myth, a legend, a demigod. They are special people who come from the lands of promise, and in their pockets are unlimited resources, plane tickets, visas, and toys. They are the Santa Claus (Father Christmas) of the world. They come with red sweaty faces and jolly smiles carrying bags full of presents for all the good people in the community. (This idea has been greatly encouraged by the UN and other Aid Organizations that visit local communities). The foreigner is greeted, cheered, and loved, just as Santa is welcomed. No one would dare to turn away this benevolent spirit, this embodiment of the hopes and dreams of happy children. You might think that I am being trite, but it is true.

I was reminded of this today as I visited some new people. I had to visit a few new areas, and I had to go back to some places that I had not been in a while.

I'll give you a brief description of my walk: I'm walking through the streets; the first child sees me; I begin to hear the whispers, "Broni! Broni!" At each door, at each corner, I see the faces of smiling children pointing, laughing, waving. Some will be brave and shake my hand; some will just follow along for a few blocks sounding the call that a white guy is visiting the community. Today I had five children, starry-eyed and in wonder, run up the road and hug my legs. Normally after a while a few adults join in and greet me, laughing with joy when they hear me speak Twi. Overall I feel like the Santa Claus of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. I am the last hurrah, the grand finale. I now know how tired he must get after waving at all those children.

When an African missionary first comes to the field, he feels like every day he must face an overwhelming papparazzi. He feels like a Santa at the mall with tired knees, just waiting for the day to be over so that he can go home. But, in time it becomes part of life. You adjust, you learn, and you grow. And though you cannot give a bike, an orange, or a football to the children that ask you while you walk down the road, you can give them something - HOPE! Hope, because a gospel-preaching church is being started in their area. Hope, because they can be invited to Sunday school. Hope, because you get a chance to invite their family to Bible studies. And with this hope comes strength!

Because this hope gives you a mission, you learn to live. Just like all overweight, elderly men with beards in the States around Christmas, you live with the association. So, to all those odd Father Christmas missionaries out there that are tired of all the attention... just remember with the job comes great rewards. Just like old Saint Nick, we get the blessing of giving every person a gift. Not one wrapped in paper, but one straight from Jesus Christ - the gift of salvation.