Christmas in a Small Parish

On the Feast of the Nativity, we would like to share a simple Christmas memory, told by the daughter of a priest. It is not a story of remarkable events, but of something far more familiar to many of us: a small parish, a cold church, and the quiet labour of serving the feast with what one has.

This recollection speaks of Christmas as it is often lived in parish life—not in outward splendour, but in faithfulness, togetherness, and a joy that needs no embellishment. We hope it will resonate with your own experience of welcoming the newly-born Christ.

AN UNFORGETTABLE CHRISTMAS

I was about fifteen at the time. My father and I travelled together for Christmas to Saldus—a tiny town in Latvia. Our family was then living in another city, Liepāja, about a hundred kilometres from the parish where my father served. My mother had a newborn in her arms, the weather was bitterly cold, and without us the church and the parish house would not be heated. So it was decided that the two of us would go alone: my father would serve the festal night service, and in the morning we would return home straight away. My older brothers were already studying at seminary, so there was really no alternative—helping my father as regent, singer, and reader fell to me.

When we arrived in Saldus, the temperature in the parish house was exactly zero degrees. In the church it was even colder. The plan was simple: to heat one room as much as possible—the kitchen—and live there. My father lit the stove and brought in a heater; I switched on the cooker and began to cook. We could not imagine Christmas without a festive night meal, even if there were only the two of us at the table.

I should say that I set about cooking with great enthusiasm (where has it gone now?!) and decided to prepare something entirely different from our usual fare. Using recipes found online, I put together a menu: a salad called Tenderness, another called Delight, baked meat (something like meat “à la française”), a cheese-and-meat pie made with puff pastry, potatoes, and—if I remember rightly—something sweet as well.

Wearing a jacket and a hat, cooking on an old stove, I prepared our Christmas table. My father was already in the church—stoking the little stoves and thawing the “holy ice”.

By evening we had managed to warm the kitchen up to a whole +15°C. That was the maximum programme, and we accomplished it successfully.

And then—the Christmas service. The Typikon was always a struggle for me, no matter how much my father tried (and later Fr Michael, who taught Church Typikon at the regents’ school). So it’s quite possible that the service included a few slips. But our small women’s quartet—myself and three other girls—was filled to the brim with Christmas joy. In general, in our little parish the festal exultation of those who came to the night service was felt especially strongly.

A Christmas tree, lovingly set up by the parishioners on Christmas Eve right in the middle of the church, was tall and decorated in an old-fashioned way—with vintage ornaments, garlands, and tinsel.

I remember very clearly how we returned home in a wonderful, festive state of mind, and my father said that never in his life had he broken the fast so deliciously. We went to sleep right there in the kitchen. I don’t remember exactly how my father slept (I think on a bench). I slept on a folding cot, placed with its foot end right up against the stove—exactly where the firewood is fed in—wearing all my outdoor clothes, a hat, thick woollen socks, and covered with a large blanket on top.

In the morning we packed the salads into containers and drove back home to Liepāja. But you know, every Christmas I remember precisely this: Saldus, our dear church, the cold kitchen, the stove, the folding cot, the meat pie, and the two of us welcoming the newly-born Christ. Simplicity, togetherness, a quiet joy, and contentment with what one has—this is what there was then, in a small provincial parish, in a cold church.

With prayerful wishes for the Lord’s help

and the protection of the Most Holy Theotokos,

Yours OCC