Except for a weekend trip to Atlanta to visit our son Austin, his fiancé Tori, and her family in early December, Lili and I are staying in town this month. As I put up the Christmas tree on Friday the 13th (yes, a bit late! 😊), the ornaments we’ve collected from our many trips transported me back to beautiful places around the world: from Colorado to Hawaii, Alaska, Italy, New Zealand, and beyond.

Then it dawned on me that Christmas didn’t simply arrive in these places on its own. Someone—or some people—brought Christ to them, and with Him came Christmas. Christianity reached Italy very early, within a few years after Christ’s death, as we hear in the stories of St. Peter and St. Paul in Rome. But it would take over 1,600 years for Christianity to reach the other places I mentioned.

In Colorado, Spanish conquistadors and Catholic priests introduced Christianity in the early 1600s [1]. Russian fur hunters and Orthodox monks brought it to Alaska in the late-1700s [2]. Anglican missionaries introduced it to New Zealand in 1814 [3], and Protestant missionaries arrived in Hawaii in 1820 [4]. Among the missionaries sent to Alaska was St. Herman, an Orthodox monk whose feast day was also December 13. He was known for his deep compassion toward the Aleuts, the native people of the region.

December 13 also commemorated St. Lucy (Santa Lucia), whose name means “light.” One story tells that she wore a wreath of candles on her head to keep her hands free as she served the poor in Syracuse, Sicily, at night. She quite literally and spiritually brought the light of Christ to others.

All these stories remind me of the famous verses in Matthew 5:14-16: “You are the light of the world. … Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.”

This begs the question: Do we bring the light of Christ wherever we go in the world?

As we journey toward Christmas, let us pray with St. Lucy [5]:

Saint Lucy, you did not hide your light under a basket,
but let it shine for the whole world, for all the centuries to see.
We may not suffer torture in our lives the way you did,
but we are still called to let the light of our Christianity illumine our daily lives.
Please help us to have the courage to bring our Christianity into our work,
our recreation, our relationships, our conversations—every corner of our day.
Amen.

Wishing everyone a bright and blessed Christmas!

References

1. Colorado Encyclopedia. Spanish Exploration in Southeastern Colorado, 1590–1790.
2. Wikipedia. Herman of Alaska.
3. Te Ara – The Encyclopedia of New Zealand. The Arrival of Christianity (1st of 2).
4. National Library of Medicine – National Institutes of Health. 1820: Protestant missionaries begin teaching in Hawai‘i.
5. St. Lucy Prayer is taken from the website of St. Lucy Catholic Church in Racine, WI.