{"id":6590,"date":"2014-01-06T20:47:00","date_gmt":"2014-01-06T20:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=6590"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:35:30","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:35:30","slug":"christmas-inside-out-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=6590","title":{"rendered":"CHRISTMAS INSIDE OUT – Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

There’s a term for why I have been struggling to put our Christmas Eve\/Day experiences into words here: cognitive dissonance.\u00a0 Dictionary.com: “Anxiety that results from simultaneously holding contradictory or otherwise incompatible attitudes, beliefs, or the like.”\u00a0 Our Christmas had two very different sides.\u00a0 I’ve already described our beautiful, luxurious Christmas Eve on Labadee Beach among the cruise ship passengers.\u00a0 And that was followed by a very traditional Christmas morning for our family, with cinnamon rolls for breakfast …<\/p>\n\n\n

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And a tree surrounded with presents wrapped in pretty paper…<\/p>\n\n\n

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And stockings filled with candy and surprises …<\/p>\n\n\n

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And practical gifts …<\/p>\n\n\n

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(Thanks, Celestia!)<\/p>\n\n\n

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As well as some homemade treasures…<\/p>\n\n\n

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And even new electronics. (Well, this was it for electronics, and it\u00a0also qualified as one of the “practical” gifts – Hannah needed a laptop for her online classes here.)<\/p>\n\n\n

And\u00a0also a little bit of snow!<\/p>\n\n\n

And it was all followed by a beautiful baked ham for lunch.THEN we met up with my “three Haitian sons” and the Heckman family and we hit the road.\u00a0 This was to become the other side of our Christmas.<\/p>\n\n\n

First stop: The Potter’s House.\u00a0 Our friend Jane was out of the country over Christmas itself, but she made sure she left behind some goodies for each child, so Melissa and\u00a0our kids had added to the goodies and then assembled a gift bag for each orphan. Now it was time to deliver them.<\/p>\n\n\n

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(At the bottom of this post is a video of these precious kids singing “O Holy Night” in Creole.\u00a0 Don’t miss it!)After leaving The Potter’s House, it was on to my friend Daniel’s neighborhood.\u00a0\u00a0With\u00a0the aid of\u00a0a gift from a friend back home (shout out to Faith!), we were able to help Daniel put together a Christmas party for a group of kids he has been feeding on a regular basis as he seeks to share the love of Christ in his own neighborhood.Preparations began on\u00a0the 23rd\u00a0when Daniel and Mikenn and I went shopping for the food.<\/p>\n\n\n

This is Daniel and\u00a0me in the center of the big open air market in Cap Haitien.\u00a0 Typically, Daniel serves soup.\u00a0 But he told me the kids are always begging him for rice and beans.\u00a0 Our budget would allow for us to serve a special meal of\u00a0rice and beans and chicken meat to about 50 kids.<\/p>\n\n\n

Buying\u00a0the vegetable oil needed to cook the chicken.<\/p>\n\n\n

And some special treats for each kid.Daniel’s best guess was that about 40 kids might show up on Christmas Day, so Melissa and I had also made 50 star-shaped Christmas cookies for the big day – to go along with a Bible lesson on the Magi following the star to find the baby Jesus.<\/p>\n\n\n

So when we tracked down Daniel at home Christmas Day and he led us across the street and down a narrow alley to a small courtyard decorated with balloons and toilet paper streamers to find a small crowd of kids dressed in their finest clothes, we were so excited to get started. We were just shy of the 40 kids we were expecting.<\/p>\n\n\n

As the food was cooking, Johnny led the kids in some singing and telling jokes (I think). It turned out, he was a natural at interacting with these kids, who thoroughly enjoyed performing for each other. The little girl below was belting out a song of some sort!<\/p>\n\n\n

And then I was up for the Bible lesson.\u00a0 Mikenn translated for me – his first experience at it – and he did a fantastic job\u00a0(as far as I could tell!).<\/p>\n\n\n

As all this was going on, kids kept trickling in.<\/p>\n\n\n

Until they overflowed the benches.<\/p>\n\n\n

\u00a0 And packed out the courtyard until there was barely room to move about.\u00a0 By Daniel’s final count, 101 kids total!Oops!\u00a0 We scrambled and started to alter plans.\u00a0 First, the Gross and Heckman kids opened the 50 gift bags we had brought and emptied the contents into one bag so every kid could get a small handful of candy.<\/p>\n\n\n

I broke all our star cookies into thirds.<\/p>\n\n\n

The Kool-Aid got stretched further, too.<\/p>\n\n\n

Honestly, we got a bit nervous about how the crowd was going to handle the situation.\u00a0 We had heard of things like this getting nasty when supplies ran out, so we helped hand out the food and then we left while the kids were finishing up their meals – two hours after our arrival – before the candy and gifts were divvied up.\u00a0It just felt a little safer to get our families out of that claustrophobic courtyard before anything ran out.\u00a0 In the end, though, there seemed to be enough rice and beans and chicken to\u00a0serve a heaping plateful\u00a0to each kid. (Maybe it got multiplied!) And upon reflection after the fact, I’m not sure there was any need for us to fear the reaction to limits on Kool-Aid or candy or gift bags.\u00a0 Because these kids didn’t come for Christmas presents<\/strong><\/em> – they came for a meal.<\/p>\n\n\n

And that’s why I was left with a bad case of cognitive dissonance:It’s easy to think of being at Labadee Beach as a luxury.\u00a0 But\u00a0by Christmas night, I was struck by the fact that\u00a0what we called a commonplace Christmas morning at home (and one even quite subdued by American standards) was incredibly LUXURIOUS\u00a0compared to the experience\u00a0of the vast majority of families outside our four walls (and around the world, I might add).\u00a0 Some people point to the frankincense, gold and myrrh brought by the wise men as the origin of gift-giving traditions at Christmas.\u00a0 But how do we justify our extravagant purchases of\u00a0chocolate and plastic and electronics\u00a0to be given to\u00a0those inside our little circles of loved ones by pointing to men who spared no expense of time, comfort or funds, to find the baby Jesus?\u00a0 And who, upon finding him, sacrificed\u00a0great wealth\u00a0to Him\u00a0and then worshipped Him?Don’t get me wrong.\u00a0 Giving gifts to loved ones to express our appreciation of them is a wonderful thing.\u00a0 But, regardless of whether it’s in moderation or over the top, it doesn’t strike me as\u00a0an adequate way to “celebrate Christmas”.\u00a0 Wouldn’t our celebration of\u00a0Christ’s birth\u00a0be more honoring to\u00a0Jesus if it centered on obeying what He grew up to teach?”Whatever you have done unto the least of these, you have done unto Me.”<\/p>\n\n\n

“Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.”<\/p>\n\n\n

“If you love those who love you, what reward will you get?<\/sup> Are not even the tax collectors doing that?\u00a0\u00a0<\/sup>And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?”<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

\u201cDo not store up for yourselves treasures on earth,<\/sup> where moths and vermin destroy,<\/sup> and where thieves break in and steal.\u00a0\u00a0<\/sup>But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven,<\/sup> where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal.<\/sup><\/span><\/span>\u00a0\u00a0<\/sup>For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

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Every year we hear a lot of Christians who protest the “war on Christmas” and whose slogan is “Let’s keep Christ in Christmas”.\u00a0 But maybe we’re telling the wrong people.\u00a0 It’s not the retailers’ or the schools’ or the government’s job to keep Christ in Christmas.\u00a0 It’s OURS. And if WE keep Christ in Christmas – really keep Him – the world\u00a0WILL take notice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s a term for why I have been struggling to put our Christmas Eve\/Day experiences into words here: cognitive dissonance.\u00a0 Dictionary.com: “Anxiety that results from simultaneously holding contradictory or otherwise incompatible attitudes, beliefs, or the like.”\u00a0 Our Christmas had two very different sides.\u00a0 I’ve already described our beautiful, luxurious Christmas Eve on Labadee Beach among […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6591,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6590"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6590\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6626,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6590\/revisions\/6626"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}