Feast of the Holy Family

When I was preparing my December column for Beijing Kids, I wrote this as a possible submission. After writing it, I reconsidered it and just kept it for the blog.

Tucked into the Christmas season is a day that has become especially meaningful for our family. The Sunday immediately after this holiday is called the Feast of the Holy Family in the Catholic calendar, and my sisters and I, sometimes coincidentally and sometimes intentionally, have over the years scheduled big family events for this day.

In 2003 I was trying to plan Myles' baptism at my home parish in Western Pennsylvania. I wanted a Sunday that would be convenient for my parents, aunts, and sisters, and the Sunday after Christmas was the best time. I thought it was an exceptionally appropriate day for a baptism, though many of my friends suspected that I really chose that day because it also was a week the Pittsburgh Steelers were not playing a Sunday afternoon game. As much as I would try to point out the connections between Myles' initiation into our faith and the feast we observed that day, many who knew me really thought otherwise.

A few years later one of my sisters chose for her wedding date the Saturday following Christmas. We were already living in China, so she wanted to schedule her nuptials around our usual travel schedule. Another sister's baby was baptized the day after the wedding, Holy Family Sunday, chosen because she knew that family would already be in town for the wedding.

Brigid was born in late 2008, and we did not want to wait until our next trip back to the US for her baptism. My parents were willing to be godparents, and their work schedules permitted their travel to China for the entire Christmas season. Our priest agreed that the Sunday after Christmas would be a good day for him as well. Yet another Feast of the Holy Family and our own family was about to mark another major milestone.

Brigid's baptism was truly a mish-mash of Chinese and Western traditions (and sometimes language as well), while the Rite itself kept with the global Church. We dressed her in her own white baptismal dress in keeping with our own traditions. The heirloom baptismal gown that had been circulated through my father's family for over a century was deemed to fragile to make the overseas trip. Instead, I had one made for the occasion, hoping that future generations will treasure this garment and its foreign origin as much as we do the one sewn from lace a great-great-great-aunt brought over from Ireland in the early 1900s.

In keeping with local custom, we did not have to pay the parish for the baptismal service. Rather we were asked to make a special offering of flowers to the church that Sunday. We bought two arrangements of mostly white flowers, probably also appropriate for a Chinese funeral, an eerie reminder that while white is the liturgical color of new life, it is also a color associated with death and mourning in China.

The Rite itself was as anywhere in the world, except, of course, in Chinese. My parents were worried about their responses needing to be in Chinese. I assured them that it was no cause for concern, “Amen” pronounced the same in Chinese as in Latin If they needed to switch to English, though, both God and the priest would understand them. I didn't anticipate our parish priest's difficulty saying Brigid's name. Most baptismal names in our parish were the Chinese versions of Mary (Maliya) or Joseph (Ruose). I had not looked up the transliteration for “Brigid” before Mass, so our poor priest, with a slight amused-at-himself sigh, sputtered out her name after a few attempts. I wanted to tell him it was okay; both God and the rest of us understood him.

Christmas is such a special season anyway. Having this extra special weekend within that season to connect the new family formed at Christmas and our own family's milestones really reminds us of the blessings of the season.