This Christmas, I came to appreciate an aspect of Catholicism that I hadn’t thought much of before: every day, no matter where you are in the world, the services are exactly the same.
As I stood alongside my host family in the pew of the Mary Queen of Peace Cathedral Parish in Kasana, Uganda listening to the Gospel reading, I smiled knowing that in a few hours, my family would be hearing the same words at St. Joseph’s Parish in New York.
The last few weeks have been harder than the rest. The staff living at the Volunteer House quickly dropped from seven, to three, then one (me) as the others completed their terms at Shanti or left for break, and the house was suddenly much quieter than I was used to. For those of you that know my family or any of my college roommates, I’ve never lived in a quiet house before. With Christmas drawing near, the thoughts of missing the usual holiday staples of cold weather, baked brie, and family set off a bad case of home sickness. To add to it, the only thing about winter that I didn’t miss out on was a bad case of the flu.
Given all of that, come Christmas day, it was greatly comforting to fall into the familiar rhythm of mass. I haven’t gone to mass much in the last few years, but as the saying goes, learning your churchly rituals is like learning to ride a bike.
From New York to DC, Ireland to Uganda, it seems mass is always the same, and not just because the Vatican dictates what readings are said at each service. Everyone arrives in their Sunday best. Half arrive late. Restless toddlers run up and down the aisles until one of their parents scoops them up and takes them outside. Most people still stumble over the words they changed in the Apostle’s Creed. A few belt out the hymns confidently while the everyone else just moves their mouths, pretending to sing. And just like everywhere else, once the mass is over, everyone gathers outside to chat.
Outside Mary Queen of Peace, I was introduced to neighbors and Father Joe who all gave their best Christmas wishes. Just as we went to leave, Sister Josephine stopped us: a man in a Santa suit was setting up in a parking lot across the street. With us were a few neighbor children who Sis J says have never seen a Father Christmas, so we stayed for a few minutes so they could dance with Santa to Jingle Bell Rock.
Back home, it’d be literally unbelievable to hear of someone who had never seen a Santa in person before. The over-saturation of the holiday season is ubiquitous. The second the Halloween decorations come down, the boughs of holly go up. Every kid is, at some point in their childhood, dolled up for a photoshoot with a mall Santa. You mail wish lists to the North Pole. You spend weeks watching Christmas movies and singing Christmas songs in anticipation.
Here, I didn’t see any decorations in stores until the week before, and my host family didn’t decorate until Christmas Eve. In the days leading up to the 25th, the biggest indicator that it was holiday time was the growing congestion on the roads as people left Kampala to return to their villages. There was a series of special Christmas markets in Kampala throughout December, but those all seemed more geared toward mzungus.
While I was sad that I couldn’t complete my favorite tradition of watching The Muppets Christmas Carol with my brother and sister-in-law, experiencing Christmas without all the typical hype was refreshing.
It’s not that Christmas is any less important here. More Christians live in Africa than any other continent (in gross total, not percentage of the population — South America takes that one).[1] Perhaps a more significant indicator of religiosity, Christians in Africa self-report higher levels of religious piety than anywhere else in the world (even beating out South America).[2] In Uganda, almost 90% of Christians say religion is “very important” in their lives. Moreover, over 80% of Ugandans attend weekly services — while the majority of Sub-Saharan African nations reported similar levels of service attendance, not a single nation in any other region comes even close.
In spite of — or perhaps because of — the fact that Uganda is much more devoutly Christian than the U.S., Christmas isn’t a drawn out, all-consuming season here. In my experience, Christmas here means a short break from work for prayer and rest. It’s about faith and family over gifts and parties. Of course, fewer people have the disposable incomes to spend on lavish parties and presents every year which certainly contributes to the lesser emphasis on the material side of the holiday. I do wonder whether, as average income rises, places like Kasana will start to look more like New York around Christmas with mall Santas in every shop. I can’t pretend to have enough experience in cultural development trends to predict this, but for some reason, I doubt it.
It’s ironic that the little many Americans know about sub-Saharan African comes from the 1984 charity track Do They Know It’s Christmas?. The song paints a picture of “Africa” as a single entity, a horrible place ravaged by constant misfortune, which has unfortunately stuck as a stereotype of the region. Reading the lyrics today is cringe-inducing: the Christmas bells that ring there are the clanging chimes of doom — really?! Ironically, it was written about the devastating famine in Ethiopia — the home of one of the earliest Christian empires in history, having converted about the same time as the Roman Empire. Do they know it’s Christmas? Well considering the significantly higher levels of Christian piety in the region, of course “they” know it’s Christmas. They just don’t turn it into an all-consuming season of consumerism like we do at home.
[1] https://www.christianpost.com/news/more-christians-now-live-in-africa-than-any-other-continent-in-the-world.html
[2] http://www.pewforum.org/2018/06/13/how-religious-commitment-varies-by-country-among-people-of-all-ages/
