Arun Sok Nhep and Barnabas Mam at a cafe in Toul Kork. Both are ordained and perform guest sermons at churches. Charlotte Pert
Cambodian Christians celebrate with Khmer carols and yike dance
There’s
no space for even a little Saint Nick in local celebrations as the few
Christians put their own mark on the holiday, Bennett Murray finds.
Christmas
has arrived to Phnom Penh in full swing as shops set up plastic trees
and Santa Claus dummies. But while many in the Kingdom’s Buddhist
majority seem to enjoy the imported traditions, leaders of Cambodia’s
small Christian community want to define Christmas on Khmer terms.
“Santa
Claus only comes for the good boys, but Christ came for both the good
and bad people,” said Barnabas Mam, a local evangelical minister and
regional director of Ambassadors for Christ International.
Nativity
scenes are performed with the colourful steps and costumes of
Cambodia’s traditional yike dance, and original Khmer Christmas carols
are sung to the tunes of classic Cambodian melodies – Barnabas himself
wrote around 400 Khmer Christmas carols while imprisoned in both
Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge and Thailand following his escape. And
instead of turkey or ham, Cambodian Christians prefer eating a chicken
curry noodle dish called nom banh chok for Christmas dinner.
A shopper browses the vast array of Santa Claus outfits available on Sisowath Quay.
“For
us, [Christmas] is more Christ-focused, where in the West it’s more of a
national holiday and the season that you can get good stuff at good
prices,” Barnabas said.
Cambodian Christmas also lasts for all of
December and into the New Year. Not for theological reasons, Barnabas
said, but due to a lack of trained ministers to conduct ceremonies.
“Because
of the exponential growth of the church, there are so many churches
that don’t have preachers, so they invite preachers from Phnom Penh,”
Barnabas said, adding that he spends every December conducting three to
four ceremonies a week throughout the country.
Born to a Buddhist
family in the capital, the 63-year-old pastor found his faith in 1972
while infiltrating a meeting of evangelicals as a communist spy. Instead
of reporting back to base, however, Barnabas found himself moved by a
pastor’s sermon and converted to Christianity. He legally adopted the
name Barnabas, which he shares with an early Christian apostle, after it
was given to him by a British missionary in a Thai refugee camp.
Arun
Sok Nhep, chief executive of the Bible Society of Cambodia and the
first Cambodian to translate the Bible into Khmer, said that the lack of
local Christmas traditions mean that Cambodian Christians must create
their own.
“We try to find identity as Christians and it takes
time, and we want to have faith and express it in the Khmer way without
syncretism,” Arun said, adding that Cambodian Christians must stick to
the religion’s roots in ancient Israel.
Adopting Western Christmas traditions wholesale, Arun said, will not suffice due to cultural differences.
“For
many Cambodians, if Christianity looks Western, it is very hard to
accept. In the West you express it with the festivals and culture, and
we express it in our culture. But the core message doesn’t change.”
Barnabas
takes particular umbrage with foreign missionaries who attempt to
impose Western-style church culture on Cambodians, referring to it as
“colonisation”.
For Piseth Heng, a youth pastor at Youth Life
Fellowship Cambodia, Christmas day will be a subdued family affair at
home. Presents will be exchanged via the secret Santa system, and
Christmas Eve dinner will take place at a restaurant yet to be
determined.
His Christmas tree, however, was short-lived.
“I did have my Christmas tree set up, but then my son crawled in and destroyed it,” he said with a laugh.
For that matter, Christmas was never part of the first century believers - nor sanctified by God, may God wink at your ignorance. The food sounds good!
ReplyDeleteDemocrazy
the West as coloniser is already here. Look at those who spell "KHMAI" instead of Khmer, deliberately so to suit their mother tongues. "Khmer" is in the Oxford dictionary; "khmai" is not. If that's not arrogance what is it?
ReplyDelete