Getting ready for Christmas (part 2)

Today my son and I talked about another aspect of getting ready for Christmas. Last week I had mentioned that one way we get ready is by studying for tests. Christmas isn’t a test, of course, but there’s lots of stuff to know about Christmas. Some of it is very interesting, but not necessarily important.

I think I finally remember all the verses of “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” I usually have trouble keeping them straight once we get past the seven swans a-swimming. But this year I made Al a game, based on Candyland, that includes some cards that let you go forward some number of spaces. I left blanks for the numbers, so you have to remember how many reindeer there are, how many days of Christmas, how many geese a-laying, etc. And after playing it several times, I think I finally have the lords, pipers, and drummers in order.

But Al agreed that knowing those numbers wasn’t all that important – unless you want to sing the carol. (As it happens, his fourth grade class will be singing it for their Christmas concert, and he will be one of the lords a-leaping.) So I asked, what about knowing who brings Christmas presents in different countries? He knew that Santa Claus has different names in other places, but he was surprised to hear that in some countries it’s someone completely different who brings the presents.

For instance, in some countries it is Baby Jesus who brings presents to children. In others, it is the Three Kings. (This seemed very wrong to Al. Baby Jesus and the three kings belong to the Christmas story, not the fun-and-games-and-presents part.) One characters I hadn’t heard of before looking at wikipedia is Olentzero. He is a traditional figure among the Basque people of northern Spain and southern France. According to tradition, he “was a pagan coal worker who went to adore Jesus in Bethlehem. Nowadays, it is said that he brings presents to all good people at Christmas Eve.”

I was interested in learning about what traditional meals are on Christmas. We usually think of turkey or ham, or maybe goose (think of A Christmas Carol). I always liked it when my father served duckling. But if I lived in Estonia, I would probably eat pork with sauerkraut, baked potatoes, white and blood sausage, potato salad with red beet, and pāté. In the Czech Republic, I’d be eating fried carp and potato salad.

And of course there are all sorts of side dishes and desserts – casseroles with liver and raisins in Finland, pickled herring and Janssons frestelse (potato casserole with anchovy) in Sweden. When I lived in Spain, I enjoyed sampling turrón, a nougat candy made of honey, sugar, egg whites, and toasted almonds. (When I think nougat I think Snickers, but traditional turrón is very hard and crunchy.)

Al agreed that was interesting – but not all that important. What’s important, he stated, is knowing that Jesus was born, and why. He eagerly explained that this is what the Christmas play he’s going to be in next week (at Winfield Presbyterian Church, where my husband preached today) is all about. So I’d have to say that, if there were a test for Christmas, I think Al would pass it with flying colors.

Cultural conundrums

Yesterday, while waiting for my computer to finish doing something or other, I was reading the October issue of the Toastmaster magazine. I didn’t actually read much of it, just skimmed through to see what might be interesting or helpful. When I came to the article “Know Thy Culture,” however, I slowed down and read every word.

I don’t remember just how much interest I took in understanding culture before I studied Spanish, though certainly I had at least some idea of the challenges involved in cross-cultural ministry from the books I had read about missions. The more I studied Spanish, however, the more interested I became in the subject. When I decided to participate in a summer abroad study program, the matter became very practical rather than just theoretical.

I’m not sure just how much I learned to recognize cultural differences during the time I spent abroad - not only that summer (which I extended to six months when I stayed on for the fall semester) but also, two years later, another nine months that I spent in Madrid as a graduate student. The most obvious differences are probably the least important. The foods are different, the daily schedule is different, and the holidays are different, but one can become accustomed to all those and still know very little of the real cultural differences.

I commented on one occasion to a Spanish acquaintance about having had to live on a stipend of only $3000 the previous year (1983). He pointed out that a Spanish man might support his whole family on that income, so he could hardly see why a single woman should think she needed more. I knew that I could buy more food in Spain with the Spanish equivalent of one U.S. dollar than that same dollar would get me in the U.S., and that housing also cost less. But I wasn’t sure how other expenses compared, and how much of the difference was being accustomed to a different standard of living (even though I had always lived frugally by American standards).

From books and classes I knew that there were also differences in family relationships, attitudes towards time, personal space (how far apart people position themselves to feel comfortable), and many other aspects of daily life. I could recognize such differences, knowing they existed, but I don’t know how much I would have picked up on, on my own, during the limited time I lived there – especially as I spent more time interacting with other American students both in and out of class than I did developing close relationships with Spaniards.

The article in the Toastmaster magazine makes it clear that some of the most important aspects of culture to understand are those that are hardest to see. There are assumptions about behavior that are so ingrained that it doesn’t occur to us that they are culturally based. Even when we come into contact with people of another culture, who behave in ways that offend us, we may easily blame it on poor character rather than a different set of values.

A better alphabet?

I’ve driven many times past church signs written in a language I didn’t understand but knew to be Korean. Actually, I’m not sure I knew they were Korean until I married a Presbyterian, and learned about the strength of the Presbyterian church in Korea. Mostly, I still thought of the unreadable symbols as another of those Asian languages that don’t use the kind of letters we do.

Beyond that, I never gave it much thought. I like learning languages, but never had any inclination to learn a language that required learning a new alphabet, except for New Testament Greek (which wasn’t too difficult because I knew much of the alphabet from math and science classes, and many of the letters are similar to those in our own alphabet). I tried learning the Hebrew alphabet once, but quickly lost interest.

I do find the whole subject of linguistics fascinating, however, and for several years, as a teenager, planned on becoming a Bible translator. I knew that it meant having to learn a tribal language unknown to outsiders, and then develop a system for writing it down, before I could even begin translating the Bible, or teach its speakers to read and write their own language. The idea was daunting, yet also an appealing challenge, all the more so because it would bring the Word of God to people who had never heard it.

I never imagined using a completely different alphabet, however. There are languages with sounds that our alphabet cannot represent, but the International Phonetic Alphabet can account for virtually all of them. In college, I took a course in which we studied how different sounds are formed by the mouth, and how to represent them all using the IPA. (I also learned that I don’t pronounce “s” the normal way, and that I have a “lazy jaw” which results in a tendency to mispronounce certain vowel sounds.)

It’s been a long time since I did much reading on linguistics, but I was fascinated to read recently, in the Wall Street Journal, about the effort of some Korean linguists to export their alphabet to other countries. The Cia-Cia language, spoken by less than a hundred thousand people on the island of Buton in Indonesia, has never had a written form. Efforts to use our Roman alphabet to write Cia-Cia produced confusion. The Korean linguists are convinced that their Hangeul script is the answer.

Why, I wondered, would the Korean alphabet be better than the IPA? It turns out that Hangeul was designed specifically to make it easy to learn. Most alphabets evolved over time, but Hangeul was created to replace the difficult Chinese and Japanese characters that had previously been the only way to write the Korean language. Not only do the symbols represent the sounds of the Korean language, their shapes even indicate the shape of the mouth for forming those sounds.

Unwelcome changes

I remember in elementary school having to start learning the metric system, and expecting that within a few years we would have to convert completely to that system. I wondered how I would ever get to have a feel for how long things were in centimeters or how much things weighed in kilograms. I was used to measuring teaspoons and tablespoons and cups, from helping my mother in the kitchen, and I didn’t look forward to having to think in liters and milliliters.

Of course, it never happened. Science class was the only place I actually had to use metric measurements on a regular basis. Most packages in the grocery store have metric measurements on the label, but I pretty much ignore them. My recipes call for 15 oz. cans of beans and tablespoons of margarine and cups of rice. The only aisle where the metric system takes over is soft drinks. (And liters were the easiest to begin with anyway, because they’re close to quarts.)

I’m really not all that good at estimating sizes, but I know about how tall five or six feet is because I’m in between. I know a meter is a little more than a yard, so I know I’m between a meter and two meters tall, but I have to use a calculator to figure out that I’m about one and two thirds meters tall. (I did try to do it in my head, but I must have lost a digit somewhere doing the math because I came out with the wrong answer.)

I have a rough idea how far an eighth of a mile is (at one time, at lesat, that was a standard city block). I know the feel of the weight of a gallon of milk, which is eight pounds. I know how to use my thumb to estimate an inch, and while my size 9 foot is less than twelve inches, I know by how much it is less than a foot well enough to use it for rough estimates. The thought of losing all those “rules of thumb” is quite unsettling.

All that came to mind this morning because I read about a completely different kind of change that will soon affect the population of an island nation on the other side of the world. In some ways it is a less comprehensive change, because it only affects driving, not cooking and clothing and just about every measuring instrument in the country. On the other hand, the potential for disaster during the first days of the change is much higher, as people forget and accidentally revert to old habits.

Unless opponents of the change succeed in stopping it, on September 7 drivers in Samoa will have to switch to driving on the opposite side of the road. Like 70% of the world, Samoans currently drive on the right side of the road. It may seem odd that they would switch to join the minority on the left side, but the idea is to be on the same side as their larger neighbors, Australia and New Zealand.

The objective, according to the prime minister who is pushing the measure, is to increase the pool of available inexpensive used cars. Many Samoans have relatives in Australia and New Zealand, and getting their hand-me-down old cars would be a big cost savings. If those cars can continue to drive on the left side of the road, that is.

Thinking about our flag

I realized at bedtime last night that today would be Flag Day. Too late, I realized, to go out and buy a flagpole. We have a flag, one I purchased several years ago when we lived in Michigan, but the flagpole I purchased with it stayed behind on the house when we sold it. (It was a two-piece pole and the upper piece didn’t line up quite right with the lower piece, producing an effect of the flag sagging on its pole.) Sometime between now and July 4 I need to find a good flagpole (preferably one that doesn’t require drilling holes in our aluminum siding).

My father always displayed our flag on holidays. It was an old flag, from before the entry of Alaska and Hawaii into the Union. I always felt vaguely uncomfortable about our house flying a flag with only 48 stars, and wondered if that was proper. It finally occurred to me today to look that up, and I found this answer at The Betsy Ross Homepage:

Is it appropriate to fly a flag that has fewer than 50 stars?

Yes. Official United States flags are always considered living, active flags. From the Betsy Ross flag to the present 50-star flag, any flag that at some time was the currently active flag is still considered a living flag to be accorded all due respect.

We children had our own handheld flags (not the tiny ones with about a six-inch pole but a pole well over a foot long and the flag larger than letter-size paper though I don’t remember the size exactly), and we planted them in the ground in the front yard on days such as July 4. Other than that, however, I don’t remember any particular teaching about holding the flag in special respect. It was a symbol, and as such it was not the symbol that mattered so much as what it was a symbol for.

In other words

Unless you make your living translating from one language to another, you probably didn’t know that today is International Translation Day. I’ve always loved words and languages, and I enjoy trying to use what language skills I have – but I’ve never developed the degree of expertise in any language to make my living that way.

I was more interested to discover that it is also World Bible Translation Day, presumably also on September 30 to recognize the translation work of St. Jerome (who died September 30, 420). I have long heard figures on how many languages the Bible has been translated into (over 2000 have at least been started), but today is the first time I found a list of all of them. Some include samples of the beginning of the Gospel of John, though I can read only a few of them.

I also found a site where you can read the Bible online in a number of languages. It even includes some limited Bible study tools. I can’t think what practical use I can make of it right now, except perhaps to try learning a verse in German and see if my older son (who is in his second year of high school German) can understand it. (I have a Bible in German but it’s that old style font that I find difficult to read.)

Another online Bible translation I was happy to find was La Sankta Biblio. It’s been decades since I studied Esperanto with my parents (at the home of a man in our town who was eager to share his knowledge of this easy-to-learn constructed language). Even so, between what I did learn, my knowledge of some of the European languages that Dr. Zamenhof used to create this language, and my knowledge of the Bible, I can more or less understand at least familiar passages.

Fascinating as all this is, however, my brain says it’s time for bed. So, good night. Bonne nuit. Buenas noches. Bonan nokton. Gute nacht. Dobranoc. (No, I don’t know Polish – but I found a site that tells you how to say good night in a whole lot of different languages.)

New stops on my daily web-walk

You may – or may not – have noticed the oddly named Wandering Bruce blog I recently added to my blogroll. Earlier this summer I wrote about the plans of one of our pastors to walk across Spain following the Camino de Santiago. Well, he’s there now and doing a lot of walking, and providing some very interesting blog posts – and some beautiful photos – along the way.

I enjoy checking his blog daily – or sometimes more often, as he sometimes posts multiple times a day, to see where he is and what he has seen (and sometimes what he has eaten – makes me miss those delicious Spanish foods like paella and chorizo). And sometimes he tells what God is doing in him as he walks, and I wonder what I can do to experience a little of that without having to fly to Spain and walk the Camino.

Today I just added another new link, to The Daily Flag. I came across the website in trying to answer a visitor’s question (I’m filling in as receptionist the front desk for the week) about why the flag was flying at half mast. I didn’t find an answer, and when I looked out the window the flag was at the top of the pole. So I’m a bit puzzled about the question, but glad that it got me to this website.

All eyes on China

For at least two decades I’ve read conflicting arguments over the best approach to foreign relations with China. Will increased trade help bring about increased freedom for Chinese people, as they are exposed to Western ideas more and experience a taste of free choice at least in the area of buying and selling? Or is that just rewarding the authoritarian regime, allowing them improved status and power without their having to improve their record much if at all?

These questions have come up for a lot of discussion as the preparations for the Beijing Olympics have progressed. And they’re not any easier to answer. I know some people think it was a terrible mistake for the IOC to award the 2008 Summer games to Beijing. They think President Bush should boycott the games. Some of them will practice their own private boycott by not watching the games on TV.

I have little interest in watching the games themselves, but I’ve many times thought about whether or not it’s good to buy products made in China. Some products are made by slave labor, and others by people working in such awful conditions that it might as well be slave labor. Yet other companies in China provide decent working conditions, and offer new opportunities for prosperity, personal advancement, and contact with Western people and ideas, which bring many benefits to their workers and their families. Reducing trade with China would reduce both.

Reading: Wall Street Journal

I don’t seem to get much reading done these days, at least not the kind where I hold a book in my hands. I listen to audiobooks, both while riding my exercise bike and while driving. What am I reading more these days is online blogs and newspapers, which expose me to lots of information and ideas I probably would never pick up from books.

Today I found not just one but three interesting subjects in WSJ online, and as I didn’t feel like choosing among them for this post, I decided to include all three.

First I read yesterday’s column by Asra Nomani (a former WSJ reporter), lamenting the circumstances which have closed the door on publication of a historical novel set in Mohammed’s harem. Written from the point of view of Aisha, Mohammed’s young wife, the novel is racy but not – from indications given in the article – derogatory towards Mohammed. But one person was critical and spread word of the novel’s premise, and with the speed of email and blogs warnings of “a new attempt to slander the Prophet of Islam” spread like wildfire. Claiming concerns about safety and possible terrorist threats, the publisher of the book has postponed the book - indefinitely.

Pilgrimage

One of our pastors, having served the church for thirteen years, has been offered a three-month sabbatical. I surprised to learn, this morning, that he plans to spend the first month walking across Spain, following the millennium-old Camino de Santiago.

Life here is getting way too comfortable these days, he says (despite all the flooding, and the recent storm that knocked down trees all over town). He spoke of our need – and his – to remember that as Christians we are pilgrims here on Earth, and that we need to remember where we are headed and not be weighed down by unnecessary stuff.

The idea of pilgrimage is certainly a familiar one in Baptist churches in my experience – but almost always in a figurative sense. One’s whole time on Earth is called a pilgrimage. The journey from unbelief to faith and then growth in faith is a pilgrimage. Sometimes a trip to the Holy Land is called a pilgrimage – though the only people I’ve known personally to make that trip are Presbyterians. And I’ve certainly never heard of a Baptist talk about making a pilgrimage to a Catholic holy site before.