A Time of Joy and Sadness

Orthodox Christians in Southern California celebrated Christmas this week with a new recognition of the chasm between the peace promised by the Christ child and the often brutal century that has just closed.

Contrasts in hopes and reality can be stark at Christmastime, when high expectations engendered by the holiday season are not met.

But as Christianity enters its new millennium, the disparity between the promise of peace on Earth and the reality of a century of conflict has been acutely felt by Armenian and Serbian Orthodox Christians in Southern California, leaders of their churches report.

In war-torn Yugoslavia, opposing nationalist and separatist causes are woven so completely into the fabric of belief and religious identity that religion can be twisted to abet evil. Reports of ethnic cleansing and streams of refugees still haunt friends, relatives and survivors here among the Serbian Orthodox faithful who celebrated Christmas on Friday.

“How can we grade the century we are leaving behind? Wars and a whole ocean of spilled Serbian blood,” Patriarch Pavle said in his Christmas message. “Suffering and misfortunes characterize the past century, but its grade can be summed up in only one word--failure,” he said. “So much blood and so little peace.”

Similarly, Armenian Orthodox Christians, who observed Christmas on Wednesday, recalled a 20th century marred by the genocide against their people and a homeland dominated for seven decades by the Soviet Union, as well as more recent political assassinations, economic distress and natural diasters.

“The 20th century has been a rather turbulent period in our history,” said Archbishop Vatche Hovsepian, primate of the Western Diocese of the Armenian Church of North America.

Orthodox churches report an estimated 40,000 parishioners throughout Southern California, primarily Americans of Armenian, Russian, Greek and Eastern European origin. Although most observed Christmas this week, the Greek Orthodox Church marks the birth of Jesus on Dec. 25, as do Western churches.

While many Orthodox celebrated Christmas this week, Roman Catholics throughout Latin America marked Thursday as the Feast of the Three Kings, or El Dia de Los Reyes Magos. The liturgical celebration is based on the account in the Gospel of Matthew of the three wise men who came to visit the baby Jesus and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. Although they are not named in the Gospel account, tradition identifies them as Balthasar, Gaspar and Melchior.

The religious feast in the Western Hemisphere originated as a Spanish colonial tradition, and each Latin American country eventually adopted a different variation.

Mexican families, for example, celebrate by serving a wreath-shaped sweetbread called rosca de reyes. Earlier this week, bakeries in the barrios of Southern California were busy kneading mounds of dough for thousands of roscas, which are topped with dried fruit, candies and powdered sugar.

The ring-shaped bread is usually baked with a tiny doll inside representing the Christ child. In the past, the rosca was used by friars to evangelize Latin Americans. Enclosing the small doll in the pastry is said to represent the hiding of the infant from King Herod’s troops.

According to custom, whoever gets the slice of rosca with the doll in it must host the next religious celebration, the Feast of Candelaria on Feb. 2, also known as Candlemas. Today, many families ask bakeries for roscas containing two or three dolls, which helps split the cost of the party.

In the Los Angeles area, Latino Catholics celebrated the Feast of the Three Kings with two processions Thursday night. Merchants on Huntington Park’s Pacific Boulevard staged a reenactment of the arrival of the three wise men, complete with live camels and elephants parading through the streets. In downtown Los Angeles, a more solemn candlelight procession was held at historic Olvera Street with songs and prayers.

Across all the cultures of Southern California, Nativity observances have been made more urgent this year by the turn of the millennium. Those feelings of urgency have colored the usual seasonal assessments of society.

Serbian Patriarch Pavle, for example, reserved his most specific account of wrongs for the sufferings of Serbs. But he left little doubt that the church must defend the sanctity of all people, although he did not specifically mention the Muslims who have been the Serbs’ main opponents in the Balkan wars.

“The whole of man, both body and soul, is holy. And that applies to every human being, regardless of his religion or nationality,” Pavle said. “Every murder, every disrespect for human personality and freedom, is sin--even more so when it is justified on ideological or nationalistic grounds.”

In August, two months after the last Serbian troops left Kosovo in the wake of the NATO bombardment, the Serbian Orthodox Church called on Yugoslavian President Slobodan Milosevic to resign because he was leading the country to “certain disaster.” Earlier, some Serbian priests spoke out against Milosevic and urged that he be sent to the war crimes tribunal in The Hague.

Still, the pain remains most acute when it involves family, friends and those in the same ethnic group.

“Serbs are no doubt being punished and, unfortunately, the innocent are being punished for things they were not responsible for,” said the Very Rev. Nicholas Ceko, dean of St. Steven’s Serbian Orthodox Cathedral in Alhambra. “People are being driven out of their homes for no reason. Their homes are burning because someone is angry at all Serbs. That’s the sad reality. . . . As each week goes by more churches are destroyed.”

Nonetheless, Ceko and other Orthodox leaders said the only possible response for those who follow Christ is to love one’s enemies, to forgive and to ask forgiveness.

“The hope as I would share it with many people is that Christ would be fulfilled in us . . . meaning that as individuals, families and nations we would really be people of love, people of unity, people of truth, righteousness . . . so that love would reign and suffering would end,” Ceko said.

It is a theme shared by Hovsepian. “We have to be more tolerant, more understanding, forgiving and having proper relationships with one another,” he said. “If you don’t love your brother, how can you love your God?”