Merry Christmas from Bangladesh!

Today is Christmas Day!  Last night we went out to try to get into the Christmas spirit which as you may imagine is pretty difficult in a Muslim country. It's not that they don't believe in Christ. Actually, they believe that Jesus was a prophet sent down at a time when mankind needed him. Same as Christians! However, having said that, they do not see him as the son of God or celebrate His birth as Christians do. 

Christmas light display at the Baptist Church in Jessore, Bangladesh

We went out last night looking for lights. We had seen some lights over the past week peeking out of the high fence on the Baptist church, but before we stopped there we tried the Catholic church. We honked the horn on our van to get the guards to open the gate. They peeked through at first and seemed hesitant to let us in until our driver announced "we have foreigners in the car!" At once the gate was opened and we were allowed in. There was a small Nativity seen set up as we went in, but other than that there was nothing that resembled Christmas. We found the father and spoke with him, he invited us to the midnight mass but warned us that the mass would be presented in Bangla. We thanked him and continued on our search of the Christmas spirit.

Christmas light display at the Baptist Church in Jessore, Bangladesh

Next we drove to the Baptist church where we knew we would get a Christmas light display. Upon entering this establishment (also through a guarded gate) the guard said to one of my Muslim companions "I see you are here just to look and not to pray" apparently this was a sassy remark regarding the fact that our companions were all Muslim. So even though they had the light display, they clearly were not in the Christmas spirit of welcoming everyone in. We took our pictures and walked around. Again we were invited to the service, this one would be Christmas day at 9am. One of our Muslim friends who was translating for us about the service, kept saying "thank you father" as we had done at the Catholic church. We had to explain to him that "Father" is only for Catholic priests and that he was know speaking with a pastor. It was quite comical. As we were leaving my friend asked the guard "so what do you think now? we are just here to spectate? these ladies wanted to come to church for Christmas". The guard quickly tried to cover his gufaw, but we had no intentions of returning.

We never made it to the third Christian church to see if they would have lights or not. Rather we just decided to go have some tea and bananas at the tea shop up the street. Being here this Christmas has made me realize why my mom always yelled at me when I tried to be lazy and spell Christmas with an X. Christ really is the reason for the season.


Merry Christmas everyone!!!