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I thought I would share the story of my first ever Christmas Eve mass, but A little bit of context first.
Every Christmas, I go visit my family in a small countryside town near Orléans, France. And every year, there is always this time when we have to decide who is going to accompany my grandmother to the Christmas Eve mass. My grandmother is basically the only religious zealot left in this part of the family, having spent her life with only one friend, sadly imaginary, and namely Jesus. So far, I had religiously avoided going to the mass all these years, but this time I thought I would show support, since she had a tough year, my grandfather having died earlier this year, and she has been fighting cancer for the past couple of years. I knew that faking an interest in Jesus would make her happy and that was the least I could do for her. Plus I thought it would be an interesting anthropological experiment.
I finish my beer, and here we go, me, my mother and father, my elder sister, my cousin and her children, and my grandmother, in route to the Christmas Eve mass. All atheists except my grandmother. (edit: to be fair to them, i'm the only one being a dick about my atheism)
When we arrived at the local church, at the entrance, a woman was handing us a colorful piece of paper and a pen. I didn’t know what this was all about, so I politely said that I wasn’t interested, thinking this was a Christian tradition I wasn’t aware of and I didn’t want to look like a fool not knowing what to do with this pen and paper. Then the woman said it was for a surprise, so I told her that I liked surprises, and I took the paper and the pen.
As soon as I entered the church, one man was standing out. He was wearing a very shiny white liturgical vestment, with a very peculiar fabric, similar to the “Rich Bazin” fabric (a traditional fabric in West Africa). He was black, the only black guy in the room. And I’m talking dark ebony black, not milk chocolate black. He was the priest. I instantly knew that this would be a great evening.
At this moment, two pleasing thoughts crossed my mind. The first was the confirmation of the current trend of Christianity’s decline in France, where the profession of priest is known to be lacking candidates, leading the churches to import priests from West Africa’s former French colonies.
And the second thought was about the irony of being here, in a small countryside town, populated mostly by elderly white people, therefore likely to be mildly racists. And their town’s priest is a black guy from West Africa...I wanted to burst in laughter (I just checked the results of the last regional elections to be sure that I wasn’t making an unfair assumption, and unsurprisingly 40% voted for the far-right nationalist party…)
I then find somewhere to sit, my father and I exchange a few jokes, and the mass begins.
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To be continued...
Next episode will have to wait for 2016, I'm out for the night. Have a great New Year’s Eve everyone
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The priest comes up to the altar, in his magnificent vestment, and asks us to stand. It wasn’t my first time in a church, so I knew the drill: stand up, sit down, I just had to do what everybody else was doing and I would be fine. As soon as the priest started talking, much to my pleasure, it made me travel back to my childhood, having lived 11 years in North and West Africa as a child. I was observing the audience, the three girl in the row before me were giggling, and the rest of the people there had an awkward look on their faces, making it clear they couldn’t make out what the priest was saying, due to his very strong West African accent. I found the whole situation hilarious.
I knew before going in that I wasn’t going to like the Bible stuff, but I was aware of that and was prepared to overlook it. And apart from a few things I thought it was fine anyway. I wanted to partake in the singing, but I honestly couldn’t get myself to sing to the glory of God, it just felt too weird for me. The only time I got myself to sing was when the chorus was in Latin, “Gloria in excelsis Deo”, for some reason it didn’t seemed as bad as in french.
Surprisingly enough though, apart from the Christmas songs, not much of what the priest said was about Jesus, the Bible or God in general. Most of his talk was about human misery, wars, climate change. We were asked to pray for the well-being of the people in Syria, especially Christians. Even the passage he chose to read from the Bible, and written on the brochure they gave us at the entrance, was the gospel of Luke, where Syria is mentioned (though to be honest, I’m probably overthinking it, since the story was more about the birth of Jesus). Overall, the speeches in between songs were about peace, and about how we could make our world a better place.
Right after talking about the COP 21, the priest asked us to take the piece of paper and the pen, and write on it something each of us can do, in our day to day lives, to help preserving the planet. It was only then that I realized the piece of paper was shaped in the form of a tree leaf. Before that I thought it looked like a fish, the kind of fish-shaped piece of paper children stick to the back of their friends on April’s fool day. I pledged on my paper that I would refrain from throwing my cigarettes’ butt on the pavement (which I already do whenever I can, but a reminder doesn’t hurt). Everyone was then invited to go hang the leaf on one of the two leafless trees standing below the altar, which I hadn’t noticed until then. In a matter of minutes, theses leafless trees were covered with colorful leaves, where you could read everyone’s pledge to make the planet a little better. I remember reading a leaf with a child handwriting where it said “I pledge to turn off the Wi-Fi every night before going to sleep”, which I found cute.
After a few more songs and prayers, the mass ended. I think it lasted about 1h30. I have to say I was positively surprised by the experience. Even though I thought the speech was a bit naive at times, it was done in good spirit. I was surprised at how politically engaged it was, but when I asked my father about it, he told me that it wasn’t at all unusual. I still think that religions are unnecessary and that overall we would be better off without it. But in this particular church, combining the good messages to the fact that it was delivered by an African cleric, thus adding a bit more diversity to this tight community, I think this Christmas Eve Mass did more good than harm to everyone involved.
Peace Out and Happy New Year!
Edited 1/1/2016 15:27:11
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