Bittersweet Christmas Liturgy

At the end of our Christmas liturgy (Mass), several members of an extended family and their close friends came to the front of the church and sang traditional ethnic songs. They were led by the matriarch – as we call her – who we previously knew had a very good voice, but yesterday's performance made us realize that she has deeper ties to professional training by her slight conducting and the cohesiveness of the group. They were all there. More than ever in fact, including an unfamiliar family along with the matriarch and patriarch's daughters and their husbands and all the kids. In recent weeks the two sons-in-law have been consistently attending liturgy, whereas their wives have rarely been seen the entire year. Nearly the whole group that was performing, as far as I know, live in the same small tourist town, and most of their work is related to tourism. They got their start in the U.S. 15 or 20 years ago when two friends came from their home country to work summer jobs. The friends kept coming back and eventually received permanent residency. Many years later, perhaps just before the war started or around that time, one of the men brought over his retired mom and dad. After hostilities broke out in the home country his sisters and their children came to the U.S., and after several months or longer their husbands were able to join them. The men were able to either depart their country before their government cracked down on men of fighting age leaving or somehow got out afterward. Their comfort level in speaking English varies, with the ones who have been here longest or more integrated being, of course, more fluent than newer arrivals. I am friendly with one of the son's-in-law. As a builder he appears to be the only one of the extended family not working in their tourist town but went outside to other areas and his work seemed to interfere with church attendance. Due to that, I noted that I had been seeing him more and he informed me that his work visa had expired. He applied for another one but has been getting the run-around. In fact, he said that someone (from the government or third party) claimed they could expedite the visa if he ponied up more money, but upon doing so was informed that it would still take many months. He is not alone. His bother-in-law is in the same situation and it appears that most or all men who arrived within the last few years have not been working since their permits expired and they can't get them renewed. But the women are working. In fact, they are working so much that they can't get a break – except for Christmas. And as one of them told my wife, they want a break. They are allowed to work because they are not men of fighting age, and apparently their country wants all their men back so they don't want our government to continue to let them work here. But just because the women are working doesn't mean all the expenses are being met. The men clearly want to provide for their families and can not. And they are stressed.

My five-year-old-son saw his friend go up to the front of the church with the carolers and was ready to join him, but my wife wouldn't let him. Why couldn't he go up? Well, because we weren't invited to participate in the singing (not that my young children would anyway) and were unfamiliar with the language and the songs. His friend's mother, on the other hand, is an immigrant who came to the US as a college student where she met her husband and the children are learning their mother's native tongue. This interaction with my son caused my wife to reflect much as I am, but during the singing I was a grinning fool. As much as I enjoyed the music and particularly loved the unity of this extended family and friends, I was left feeling more alienated than usual. It was bittersweet. We chose to make this Eastern Catholic Church (Byzantine) our parish because we like the liturgy (incidentally, Byzantine churches are all in union with Rome), but the ethnic character has always made me feel like an outsider. Despite the good and hardworking young priest – who is himself here on a work visa – and the welcoming of a number of prominent parishioners, my family will never truly be one of them. We are like orphans asking to be adopted. We do not have a shared cultural heritage and identity, and those in my parish are very proud of where they come from – as they should be. My cultural heritage was mixed in with the great American melting pot, and as such there is no shared identity anymore. It doesn't really matter if a parish were at one time German, or Polish, or Irish, today it is nondescript and multi-ethnic. People go to Mass and experience more or less the same thing and then leave as quickly as possible afterward. There is no real community for the vast majority of Catholic parishes, but we have community at my parish. Almost every Sunday during winter the parishioners meet downstairs for food, coffee, conversation, and often catechism for the youth. Excluding the recent arrivals, most of the people long-established here no longer speak the tongue of their homeland but know enough for the songs and responses in the liturgy, and that is enough. But in a universal (catholic) church shouldn't we all have the same liturgical experience? Is that what draws us closer as a community or is it shared religious AND cultural values? If the former, the Traditional Latin Mass should have been enough and there should not have been a call for Vatican II. But Vatican II was called and the language used in the Mass changed to the vernacular. Are we more united than before? It sure doesn't seem like it. But if a shared religious and cultural heritage brings us closer as a community, as a multi-generational American with mixed European heritage how do I honor and celebrate my culture? That's a problem, because 'my' culture is a stew that seems to be differentiating into separate parts in an accelerated manner. What I'm left with is attending a liturgy at a church with people that have a shared cultural language and history that is not my own, and I'm not interested in making it my own because my heritage comes from somewhere else. Even if my family were to wholeheartedly adopt the parish culture, I believe that there are at least a few perplexed members who would continue to see us as unwelcome party-crashers.

I once visited the graves of my ancestors in a European church cemetery. It made me emotional. This is where my paternal lineage came from. They are my roots. But now all my people from that ancestral homeland and the others are dying. Not because of war but due to very low birth rates and the assimilation and rejection of their cultural uniqueness by allowing millions of people into their countries who do not share any of their history, language, OR religion. When my ancestors first immigrated to America they still retained their heritage while embracing the hopes, dreams, and adventure of their new land. They fully assimilated - as perhaps they needed to in a new nation. They embraced baseball and apple pie (so to speak) but what did they lose? The countrymen of those singing in my parish are also dying, but for them it is because of war. Is it better to die because you have given up on yourself or because you are defending yourself?

The question answers itself.