Christmas in Mongolia is much more low-key than Christmas in the United States. For one thing, Mongolians don't celebrate Christmas When the Russians came to Mongolia, Mongolians began to join them in celebrating New Year's Eve on December 31. Before that they only celebrated a lunar new year usually in February. So they often mix the New Year's Eve celebration with Christmas. My Mongolian neighbor asked me recently if I celebrated Christmas on December 31.
The stores do have sales in December that they often characterize as Christmas sales. But since the Mongolians neither give presents nor recognize December 25 as a special day it is difficult to understand why they chose to call them Christmas sales. I think the stores are using Christmas as an excuse to stimulate materialism and greed in Mongolia. It is sad that Mongolians would view Christmas as a commercial holiday (which is what it has become in America) rather than as a religious holiday.
As a consequence Christmas Day is often a very relaxing day. During the weeks preceding Christmas, we invite over Mongolian friends for some celebration and usually have a party for the children that attend the Sunday school.
Along with celebrations to mark our Savior's birth when I was teaching I often had special classes to conduct and final exams to give because it was the end of the semester. In fact, one year I was rather busy with classes on Christmas Eve.
Then on Christmas Day we usually stay at home and spend the day as a family. Our first Christmas in Mongolia though had its share of excitement. But first, you must understand a little about our dwelling situation. We were living on the fifth floor of a nine-story building. Our building had multiple entrances. Each entrance had a stairway and a tiny elevator. The elevators were so small that four adults would find it uncomfortable to be on the elevator together. Clustered around each elevator and stairwell were four doors that led into four different apartments. Behind the elevator shaft was a trash chute.
When our first Christmas in Mongolia arrived we had been in Ulan Bator for about three months. We had read the Christmas story and opened gifts. We had eaten a delicious Christmas meal and were in that stage where the kids fiddle with their gifts as the parents watch. We pick at the leftovers, help ourselves to another serving of dessert, and clean up the mes. Much of the litter that remains afterwards on Christmas - torn wrapping paper, boxes of various size and shapes, ribbon, smashed bows, and the little twist ties that hold so many items in their boxes - had been picked up. I decided to take it all out to the garbage chute. As I opened the door, I noticed that the stairwell/elevator area was smoky, more smoke than I had ever noticed before.
When I went back inside I remarked to Kristie that there was lots of smoke in the stairwell and elevator area. I thought I ought to check on it again after an hour or so. I told my wife that I would hate to be trapped on the fifth floor of a burning building because we couldn't use the elevator - you should never use an elevator during a fire - and would be unable to escape down the stairwell because of the smoke. Remember in the winter there is very little or no ventilation in Mongolian buildings. Any smoke in the building gets trapped there because there is no way for it to escape.
The other consideration was the weather outside. Late December in Ulan Bator is cold. The temperature was probably zero outside. Because we had three children and Caleb was less than a year old at the time, taking everyone outside was a half hour of preparation - another half hour for the smoke to build up. Finally, we didn't have a vehicle at the time ... so where would we go if we abandoned the apartment?
The smoke out in the stairwell wasn't bad yet, and I thought if I waited it might clear out. But when I checked again less than an hour later, the smoke was so bad that I thought we might not make it down the stairwell. Concerned that it would take us a half-hour to get prepared to go outside into sub-freezing temperatures, I made a decision that we should start preparing to leave the apartment immediately. Once we were ready if we discovered that the smoke was clearing, we could always take our warm clothes off again.
Wondering where we could go, I called Buren, my closest Mongolian friend at the time and told him in my broken Mongolian that I thought there was a fire in my apartment building and to come over. Meanwhile, Kristie began getting the children ready for the Mongolian ice-box. As soon as I had completed my phone call, I rushed to join her.
Having completed my phone call with
Buren, we hurried to get the three young ones ready to hurry out the door. Of course, the children were upset, here we were on Christmas Day suggesting that we should leave all their toys. Charissa in particular was worried about leaving a stuffed animal that meant a lot to her. But despite their young age, we must have communicated the urgency of the situation because in record time, we had put on sweaters and hats and gloves and scarves and something on the girls' legs. As we rushed out the door, I noted that the smoke seemed to be even worse than before. Used to riding the elevator down, the girls headed for the elevator shaft. However, the elevators in Mongolia can often be unreliable anyways and one should never take an elevator in a fire. So I herded them towards the stairs.
Interestingly enough, as we headed down the stairs, the smoke lessened until by the first floor it was quite bearable. As we rushed out the entrance of our apartment,
Buren drove up in his car. We put the children in his car and drove the short distance over to
Buren's house. The kids seemed short of shocked as we entered their house. We had been there several times before but they had expected a quiet, calm evening with their newest toys.
Buren and I headed back over to the building. I was interested to try to find out what was going on. Were there others who needed evacuating? When would the fire trucks pull up? Could we go back to our apartment tonight? When we arrived things were still quiet. I tried to explain in my three-month-old Mongolian just what was going through my head. I was surprised that there wasn't more activity. In the hustle and bustle and anxiety of evacuating my own family, I hadn't noticed how quiet the building seemed. But now as I returned with
Buren my senses were sharpened trying to discover what I could.
Buren and I entered the quiet building and I immediately noticed that the smoke had lessened already.
We worked our way up to the fifth floor; the smoke didn't seem so bad up there now. When we went into our apartment it was still relatively smoke free. I was surprised that the smoke seemed to be lessening. There didn't seem to be anyone fighting a fire, and it had been growing worse for the previous hour.
I asked
Buren if he thought it was safe to return to the apartment. He said that he thought it would be safe. I asked him what he thought caused all the smoke. He explained (several times since I couldn't understand everything immediately) that often people throw burning material down the trash chute. If there is much trash at the bottom it can cause a lot of smoke. The trash is too soggy to really burn so it just
smolders and creates a lot of smoke. The smoke then spills out from the garbage chute into the stairwell and elevator shaft.
After
Buren explained it all to me I felt really silly. My family never had been in any real danger. I went back to
Buren's house, collected my family, and returned them to the apartment feeling very silly.
It's a story that illustrates some of the pressures of living in a strange country: the lack of understanding of what is going on, the feeling of helplessness as you try to describe what you are thinking in an unfamiliar language, the dependence on others patience when you do strange things (like abandon your apartment when there is no danger).
This year we had more children than ever. Although we only invited a dozen children, 16 came to the party. Along with our four children that meant we had twenty children in our apartment. With temperatures outside below zero, sending the children outside to play was not an option.
While the children are listening to the Christmas story and participating in the gift exchange the cookies are baked. Then the cookies go home with the children at the end of the party. With sixteen different children all trying to find their cookies at the same time it was quite a crowd in the kitchen.
Somehow when I took the picture at the end of all the children who came I cut out two of children on the end. Not counting our own family, nine families are represented in this picture. We have had the chance to witness to most of the parents at least once. Please pray for the salvation of our neighbors and that the seed planted at this year's party will grow to fruition on the lives of these young Mongolians.
