Like Scrooge the morning after, the clergy of Du Page keep Christmas well. But also like Scrooge, they often find the holiday is half over before they can join the celebration.
Blame the delay on duty, not ghosts. For most priests and ministers, December is a marathon of church services, programs and preparations that leave little time for the home and hearth-gatherings taken for granted by the folks in the pews.
”Christmas Day is really the first that I am able to spend any real time with the family,” said Arthur DeKruyter, pastor of Christ Church of Oak Brook, now in his 42nd year as a minister.
Christ Church schedules numerous Christmas events, including a television special and three services on Christmas Eve.
”I would say that`s one of the penalties that a pastor`s family pays. The holidays-Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter-days when other families are together and can celebrate, we are busy. That is part of the territory.”
When both Mom and Dad are ministers with heavy preaching, teaching and social service duties, the territory gets rough, indeed.
Capt. Brenda Herivel, who leads the Salvation Army Aurora Corps Church and Social Services with her husband, Rich, reported a recent conversation with a fellow officer who had not found time to put up a tree at home last year: ”The other day her 8-year-old said to her, `Mommy, please have time to put our tree up this year.”`
Herivel said, ”We work so hard to help hundreds of families have a happy Christmas; it`s sad to let your own go.”
Herivel told her friend about her own family`s Christmas survival tip:
”We do it on Thanksgiving.”
After the Thanksgiving meal, the Christmas decorations come out, the tree goes up and later in the day the turkey leftovers are eaten from Christmas china.
”It`s the only day we will have off before Christmas,” said Herivel.
”It`s a real tradition for us, and our girls (Heather, 14, and Kimberly, 11) just love it.”
Such flexibility saves the holidays for many church families, as does an ability to merge pulpit and personal observances smoothly.
”The girls are very involved with our ministry,” said Herivel. ”When they have a day off school or after school, they want to come here and help us.”
Arthur J. Landwehr, senior minister at Grace United Methodist Church in Naperville, said, ”I don`t separate it out. The candlelight service (at church) on Christmas Eve is where we really begin our home celebration. It`s very public but still very personal and moving for my family.”
Family involvement also comes easily to Ken and Priscilla Stenman of Glen Ellyn, where he is pastor at Faith Lutheran. He said, ”Both my wife and I come from families where the traditions of Christmas always fit around worship. I remember as a child the meals and the opening of the gifts always focused around the center of `What time is worship?` I can empathize with those who don`t have it; for them it can become conflicted, I think.”
When Stenman was ordained 28 years ago, new traditions became necessary:
”Instead of going home to Grandma and Grandpa, they came to us at Christmas. You need family support to do this and not just from the spouse but from everyone.”
At home, the Stenmans observe many of the Swedish Christmas customs of their forebears: the candle-lit Advent wreath or log, the manger scene with the figure of the Baby Jesus added on Christmas Eve, the observance of 12 days of Christmas (from Dec. 25 to Jan. 6).
”During those days we really maximize the family time,” he said. ”I`ll come home early or take a day off. If we don`t open presents until after Christmas, nobody is upset.”
Their three children, Dawn, Meg and Robb, are now all grown and living in the Chicago area. When they visit their parents on Christmas Eve, Stenman said, ”they know what they`ll get”: potatis korv (potato sausage), krop kakka (dumplings with pork-”heavy as a bowling ball”), lutefisk (lye-soaked fish-”I can`t say it`s my favorite thing, but if you have some good sauce on top . . . ”), brona beana (brown beans, ”which I don`t like but some of my family do”) and herring.
The Scandinavian connection grew stronger for the Stenmans in the late
`70s, when he served an American church in Stockholm.
”The holidays in Sweden are marvelous,” he said. ”It gets dark so early there, with only three or four hours of light many days, and they put candles in the windows and all over their homes. On Dec. 13 they have their Santa Lucias and more candles. We did that up good when we were there.”
In the Santa Lucia ceremony, the Stenman children rose early to prepare coffee and buns for their parents. The custom calls for the oldest daughter, dressed in white with a crown of candles and a red sash, to lead a procession to the parents` bedroom to serve them in bed. Younger sisters are dressed as attendants with tinsel in their hair; their brothers dress as tomte, or little Santa Claus helpers.
Also in Stockholm, Stenman experienced a reprise of his childhood Christmases in Colorado.
He said, ”When I was a kid, we`d get up before dawn to go to the Julotta, an early service. It was cold, and the church would be dark when you`d go in, lit only by candlelight, and when we came out, the sun would be just starting to rise.”
Years later, on the Swedish island where the Stenmans lived, they attended services in a small centuries-old church up the hill from their home. ”There we saw the real Julotta,” he said. ”It was like it was when I was a child, because in this church, I was not the pastor. I didn`t have to lead; I was a participant.
”We went almost every year to this service, but I remember this one Christmas. It had snowed enough that some people came to church in horse-drawn sleighs. They had put torches on the sleighs, and they left their lit torches outside the church in a big bonfire. Everyone lit a candle from the bonfire to take inside. You`d walk into the church and the candle glow was magnificent.
”After the service, it was still dark outside, and we went to the pastor`s home for breakfast of rice porridge and cheese on bread. We sang Swedish Christmas folk songs and did a line dance. You would hold hands and dance all through the house and then come back to go around a Christmas tree. ”We had five marvelous Christmases in Sweden.”
A Christmas abroad is also an indelible memory of Beth Appel, associate pastor of First Presbyterian of Glen Ellyn. On a tour of the Holy Land when she was in seminary several years ago, she spent Christmas Eve in Bethlehem and worshipped in the Church of the Nativity, built on the traditional site of Jesus` birth.
She said, ”The town had almost a carnival atmosphere, with gaudy lights everywhere, vendors hawking their wares, people drunk in the streets. It was very wild, anything but a Little Town of Bethlehem.”
The tour leader reminded Appel and the others that they were seeing a scene much like the over-crowded Bethlehem of the first Christmas.
”It was a powerful image for me,” she said.
Appel, who is single, will participate in three Christmas Eve services at First Presbyterian and then fly to Lancaster, Pa., on Christmas Day to spend a week with her family.
”It is one time I do get to worship with my home congregation simply as a member, and that`s very important to me,” she said. ”It`s a completely different experience. When you`re leading worship, it is not the same as sitting back, being ministered to, having time and space and silence in which to meditate and pray privately without that public role.
”Quite frankly, that`s one of the things I miss-being able to worship in my home church on Christmas Eve, with our midnight candlelighting service with all my relatives. All my life that was one of my favorite experiences, though worshipping here with my congregation is wonderful as well.”
”I`ll Be Home for Christmas” sounds a familiar note among clergy, who hit the road along with the rest of the population over the holidays. For Pastor Daniel Burmeister of Bloomingdale Church and his bride, Lara, it will be Ohio and family celebrations.
Downstate Bradley is the destination of Father Vern Arseneau after the last Mass at St. Mary`s Church in West Chicago. Pastor Andre Allen, his wife, Denise, and their five daughters will join Chicago relatives for a traditional Christmas Day dinner. Allen is minister at the Second Baptist Church of Wheaton.
David Maghakian, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Itasca, will head for a cabin on Lake Michigan and a week of relaxation with his wife, Ginger, and 3-month-old daughter Erika.
”It was a tough decision,” he said. ”My parents live in Minneapolis, and we had planned to go there for the holidays. But I know that come Christmas Eve, I`ll be absolutely exhausted and drained.”
At the Lombard Mennonite Church, Steve Yoder will lead his first Christmas services as pastor and then leave for Ohio with his wife and three young sons.
He said, ”I know it sounds trite, but the best Christmas for us is with our families. Just for the fun of being together, sitting around the table with each other, seeing each other. And then there`s the sweets. My mom`s the best at rocky road fudge.”
That may be, but even clergy who can compromise on theology continue to split hairs over what should appear on the table at Christmas. Former Indiana resident Bob Flatt, minister at the First Baptist Church of Wood Dale, dotes on persimmon pudding. Sheila Ferguson, Canadian-born associate rector of St. Barnabas Episcopal Church of Glen Ellyn, insists on a standing rib roast and Yorkshire pudding on Christmas Day, followed by plum pudding and shortbread.
The family of Father Chris Constantinides of St. Athanasios Greek Orthodox Church in Aurora will eat anything but Greek. ”We eat so much Greek food during the year; our Christmas is pretty Americanized,” said the priest. And the women of the Schmidgall family of Naperville will sleep in on Christmas morning while the men, led by Robert Schmidgall, who is pastor of the Calvary Temple in Naperville, prepare a breakfast of loose liver sausage and fried potatoes.
Schmidgall said, ”I grew up on it; it`s a German thing. We fix the food, then get out the good china, wake the ladies, and share breakfast together.” Last year, at St. George`s Romanian Byzantine Catholic Church in Aurora, Father George Kuzara introduced parishioners to a Polish Christmas wafer, the oplatki. He said, ”I told them how we would do it in my family: At the Christmas Eve dinner, when the first star appears in the sky, the head of the household would say a prayer, break the oplatki, and say, `May the peace of Christ be with you.` Then everyone at the table shares the oplatki and wishes them peace.
”If you were on a farm, you shared it with the animals and asked God to bless them, and you also put some into the fields and gardens.”
In the Stumpf home in Burr Ridge, the Christmas table is decorated with sprouts of wheat planted earlier on St. Barbara`s Day, Dec. 4, and laden with 12 traditional French desserts, one for each day of Christmas.
”My mother was a French war bride,” said Eric C. Stumpf, pastor of Trinity Lutheran in Burr Ridge. ”She would always make the buche de Noel, or Christmas log, for dessert, and it was a very complicated affair.”
Besides recipes, Stumpf`s mother brought customs when she married and immigrated to the United States after World War II: mistletoe boughs, not for kissing under but for decorating doorways and family pictures; the yule log ceremony; and santons.
”Santons literally means little saints,” said Stumpf. ”They are little painted clay figurines, about 2 1/2 or 3 inches high, that are used around the manger scene.”
A typical scene includes an authentic-looking barn (the Stumpf barn is the tile-roofed type found in southern France); the Holy Family and the shepherds in biblical dress; and the santons attired in everyday dress of the French 19th Century.
”These are the villagers coming to the stable to worship the newborn Christ,” said Stumpf. ”Each represents a trade or occupation. So you have the mayor with this tri-colored sash, and he`s hurrying because he`s late. You have the fishmonger, the baker, the goat herder with his little goat. You have the highway robber who is coming to the stable to lay down his knife and reform. You have the village priest, always on the rotund side, wiping his brow with his handkerchief; the story is that the priest is the last one to know.”
As long as his parents lived, Stumpf and his wife, Linda, with their children Heather, 17, and Andrew, 15, observed the yule log ceremony with them at their Medinah home. He said, ”The afternoon of the 24th, we would get the right kindling and lay out the fire and then choose the log, as big as you could lift. It could not be split. We`d decorate it with ribbons and other ornaments and put it on the kindling.
”After the last service on Christmas Eve, my mother would light a lantern from the church candles and bring it home. The oldest person would take a candle and light it from the lantern, ask God`s blessing on the house and the new year, and end with `If we cannot be one more, may we not be one less.`
”Then that person would blow out the candle, hand it to the next one who would relight it from the lantern, say the words, and so on down to the youngest person. The youngest would light the candle, say the words if he could, and light the yule log fire with the candle.”
Although the tree was not part of his mother`s southern French Christmas, Stumpf and his wife give it a place of honor.
He said, ”Her background is German, and the tree is very important. You decorate it with old ornaments that you receive from aunts, uncles, grandparents. Each one has a story. Every year you add a new ornament and hand it down. Frankly, we have more ornaments than we can possibly put on the tree, but we rotate them.”
This Christmas the yule log will blaze once more on a Stumpf hearth.
”After my parents died, we didn`t do it, because we didn`t have a fireplace,” he said. ”But this year we have bought a house with a fireplace, and we`re looking forward to doing it again. And we`ll get the largest log we can.”
Scrooge could not ask for more.
