Millions of People Celebrate Christmas--Old and New

Despite the weighty problems of the world, millions of people took time out to celebrate Christmas. For some it was a new experience, for others it was an observance of old traditions. Everywhere, the message of peace seemed to take on new meaning this year.

In Bethlehem, soldiers and cautious visitors wandered in nearly deserted streets as fear of violence brought one of the smallest Christmas crowds in recent memory.

Festivities were overshadowed by the 3-year-old Arab uprising. Under heavy security, a few hundred worshipers filled St. Catherine’s Church to celebrate midnight Mass. Many would-be pilgrims shunned the birthplace of Jesus Christ, which is now part of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

“This Earth is tired, oversaturated with injustice,” Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem Michel Sabbah said.

“Here in Bethlehem, peace is absent,” he added.

“Love is what we need today on the eve of an imminent world war and in the situation in which our land lives today, still dominated by injustice and a desire for justice, and the worry and fear with the desire for peace.”

While not mentioning the intifada directly, Sabah spoke of “children thrown into the melee of violence.”

Elias Freij, Bethlehem’s Palestinian mayor for 19 years, said, “It is the saddest, gloomiest Christmas I remember in my lifetime.”

A loosely packed crowd filled barely a quarter of Manger Square, which was decorated by Israeli authorities with a sole illuminated Star of Bethlehem on an evergreen tree planted in front of the Israeli police station.

Most Bethlehem residents kept away except for groups of young Palestinian Christians, some of whom kissed the metal star in the marble floor grotto beneath the Nativity church, the traditional site of the manger of the infant Jesus.

Christmas found its way into Iraq, a country threatened with war. Under stained-glass windows honoring World War I dead in Mesopotamia, worshipers at Baghdad’s Anglican church sang carols in Korean and reflected on the prospect of war in the Persian Gulf. The 16 South Koreans, three Australians and two Britons sang “Silent Night” to a guitar accompaniment.

Masses in Arabic, German, Italian and English were celebrated at Saint Raphael’s Roman Catholic church in Baghdad. And at the Rasheed hotel the public address system in the lobby broadcast songs of peace and love.

The Persian Gulf crisis led Britain’s Queen Elizabeth to make a rare incursion into world politics in her annual Christmas Day message.

“The invasion of Kuwait was an example on an international scale of the evil that has beset us on different levels in recent years--attempts by ruthless people to impose their will on the peaceable majority,” she said.

The queen praised British troops and those who resist “the bully and the tyrant,” allowing others to safely celebrate Christmas. She said that she hoped they may “soon be reunited with their families safe and sound.”

In a reference to the IRA, she said the United Kingdom had once again suffered from “the scourge of terrorism.” The queen added that she would never cease to admire the courage of the people of Northern Ireland who went on with their affairs in defiance of the violence.

Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie, leader of the world’s 70 million Anglicans, referred in his last Christmas sermon before he retires next month to the specter of “fearsome combat” in the gulf. He prayed for the safety of troops there as well as for the people of Kuwait.

“We pray also for the United Nations, that the fragile opportunity for creating a new world order of law and restraint may be upheld,” he said.

Germans in Berlin opened their homes to a former occupying army Christmas Day, inviting Soviet soldiers for a holiday feast and good cheer.

Servicemen dined on roast goose and dumplings and enjoyed hospitality with families who said they wanted to counter an atmosphere of hostility facing Moscow’s troops in eastern Germany since unification.

“It’s a very special, unprecedented day for us, like a big Christmas present,” said 1st Lt. Vadim Melnikov, 23, of Vladivostok as he visited the home of Erhard and Waltraudt Mai.

The German-Soviet Friendship Society, which organized stiff ceremonial events in old Communist East Germany, arranged for about 250 Soviet soldiers to visit German homes as a gesture of Christmas goodwill.

Melnikov and Pvt. Anatoly Pilipenko, 19, who also visited the Mai family, said they did not normally observe Christmas until Jan. 6, or Epiphany, and that Tuesday was a normal working day on their base.

“It’s heart-to-heart contact, people to people,” said Klaus Wuest, whose guest was Nikolai, a 19-year-old soldier from the Ukraine city of Lvov.

Wuest said he contacted the Soviet command last week and asked if it would allow a Soviet soldier to spend Christmas Eve with him, his wife, Liane, and their 5-year-old son, Willi.

For the first time in 50 years of Soviet rule, Christmas was an official holiday in the Baltic republics of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. As part of their move to break from the Soviet Union, the Baltic republics declared Christmas Day and Christmas Eve official holidays.

The three republics have a large number of Roman Catholics and Protestants who celebrated Christmas with church services and family gatherings.

Christmas was also observed by Roman Catholics and Protestants in the Soviet Union, particularly in the western Ukraine.

An estimated 10,000 Albanian Christians attended their first Christmas Mass in 23 years, kneeling shoulder-to-shoulder in the icy midnight air in a graveyard in the northern city of Shkodra.

“It’s like winter suddenly turning into summer,” said the Rev. Simon Jubani, the Roman Catholic priest who conducted the Mass under the glare of television lights at the parish of St. Anthony of Padua.

The service was made possible by President Ramiz Alia’s decision last month to lift a ban on religion imposed by the late Stalinist leader Enver Hoxha.

Jubani, 64, was freed from prison in April, 1989, after serving 26 years for religious activity.

In his sermon, he asked for greater democracy and a “clean Albania.”

“Maybe you want some miracles right now,” he told the congregation. “But miracles exist only within the Catholic Church, and if you want miracles you must adhere to this church.”

Recorded organ music pealed through loudspeakers, and the crowds surged forward to view a Christmas crib scene peopled by farmers in Albanian costume.

Although Communist-ruled Cuba officially stopped celebrating the holiday in 1969, many families clung to tradition and ate a special meal on Christmas Eve in the privacy of their homes.

Small, discreet Christmas trees, some with homemade decorations crafted from painted egg shells or papier-mache, were put in living rooms around the island.

Churches celebrated Mass for practicing Christians. “Christmas has not been wiped out,” said Don Manuel de Cespedes, secretary of the Cuban Catholic Bishop’s Conference.

In state-controlled churches in China, worshipers and the curious joined in Christmas prayer and song.

China is officially an atheist country and Christmas is viewed as an exotic foreign holiday. But department stores and hotels catering to foreigners featured Christmas themes.