Merry Christmas, to all...

• by donr
• 2014-12-25 01:12:11
• General Posting
• 1126 views
• 6 comments

....or Happy Holidays, as the season you celebrate is recognized.

As a Christian, I like to share the joy of our holidays; why should we keep our happiness to ourselves? Would you prefer that we wish you a miserable day? How about a "Bah! Humbug!"? Or perhaps a "Go suck a rotten cobra egg!"?

It is our mandate to share with the world, regardless of faith. Like the man on the road to Samaria who fell amongst thieves & was left to die, we stop to help the fallen w/o asking their tenets. Hurricanes, volcano eruptions, tsunamis; name the disaster and location & we will go to help - we do not need to be asked, we just go. All this from a book called "Tin Lanh" - but more on that later.

16 minutes ago, 25 Dec 2014 crept across the time zone called Eastern Standard in the western hemisphere, as it continued its inexorable path around the world. Even though it starts in Greenwich, England, on the Prime Meridian, Christmas day actually begins in the middle of the Pacific Ocean at the 180th Meridian - the "International Date Line." Strange that days & dates start in the middle of nowhere w/o a human in residence? I guess they have to start somewhere.

Let me relate exactly what strange things the International date Line can do to you - it can cause you to totally miss a date in your life & you can NEVER get it back. All you have to do is cross the line precisely at midnight & BANG!!!! you just lost a day. Back in April, 1975, I was flying east to west toward the island of Guam, a US possession just barely on the "Tomorrow " side of the line. Promptly at Midnight, we crossed the line & the date jumped one day forward - meaning that I missed the date that would have been there but seconds prior. I cannot recall the date - but I can recall the DAY - it was Easter Sunday that I missed. An entire airplane full of people missed that day!

Back in December 1967, I was temporarily stationed in Da Lat, Viet Nam as an advisor to the Vietnamese National Military Academy. (My normal unit was at a large logistics base at Cam Ranh Bay on the coast.) There was a flourishing Christian community in Da Lat and a flock of American missionaries spreading the word. Somewhere outside the city was a small protestant church that generally filled itself to the walls on Sunday. There was also a Roman Catholic Church w/i the city, but I cannot recall where it was.

The missionaries drove around town in two good-sized Chevy vans painted orange IIRC. Emblazoned on their sides in very large white letters were the words "Tin Lanh,." I learned early that Tin Lanh was Vietnamese for "Good News," their name for the Bible - especially the 4 Gospels.

These missionaries were true to their calling & all of them came calling on our advisory team at least once while I was there. They were every size, age, gender & marital status imaginable & we sat & chatted fora n hour or so.

The next thing you know, we were invited by the local Protestant church to attend Christmas Eve services - in Vietnamese, of course. so all the men from the house I lived in put on clean field uniforms & piled into our jeeps & drove outside the safe area of the city to find their church. It was not unlike any one of thousands of wood frame steepled churches on WW-II US army bases or in many small towns. It was filled to the rafters w/ people, including about 8 American soldiers. We felt naked - we'd left our weapons at home. (Anyone out there ever go play a round of golf w/ a rifle jammed into their golf club bag? Oh, well, that's another story.) I can only guess at what was said & sung that night. The service started at about 9 PM & lasted till after midnight. Now some of it we "Understood," because it was the same music - different words - that we knew. There were the obligatory children's choir, teens & adults. Naturally a sermon. Not a word of English. But that did not matter. They were celebrating the same thing we were celebrating - except a day sooner than family back home on the other side of that infernal date line. We sensed the same happiness & joy w/i their congregation that we would have felt at home.

There is a coda of sadness to this tale, however. About one month later, on 29 January 1968, the infamous "Tet Offensive" broke out all over the country of South Viet Nam. (For the uninitiated, Tet is the Lunar New Year period for the calendar used in Asia.) It struck Da Lat & the missionaries were evacuated to the big logistics base at Cam Ranh Bay on the coast. Our unit hosted them for at least one meal while they were awaiting whatever was to happen to them, so I had a short reunion w/ people I'd met out in the countryside. They came out w/ little more than the clothes on their backs. They reported to us that among the atrocities committed was the murder of Christians in the Vietnamese community.

Sometime in early Jan 1968 I arranged for a bunch of winter (Yes, WINTER clothing; it regularly drops below freezing at over 5000 feet elevation where Da Lat is in the highlands) clothing to be delivered to my unit at Cam Ranh Bay for distribution to children of the South Vietnamese Army living in Da Lat. I was back in Cam Ranh Bay by the Tet holiday that started on 28 or 29 January, so I gathered up our unit's Chaplain's Assistant & we flew about 200 lbs of kid's clothing up to Da Lat to be distributed during the big Tet holiday period. Alas!!! we never found out what happened to the clothing. We left the next day and the Tet offensive started while we were on the way home.

Interestingly, we flew out as over 450 lbs of ballast on a cargo plane loaded w/ vegetables. The crew chief joined us as we crawled well up into the tail of the aircraft to help balance a poorly distributed load of veggies on the plane. But that, like the golf game is a story for another day.

So there you have it, folks - Christmas around the world as seen by one of your flock.

Donr