ArticleThis Christmas, for our family holiday we’ve chosen to visit Santa Claus in Rovaniemi, as well as a concentration camp in Dachau. I stress that this isn’t a package holiday.
It didn’t start out that way. This Christmas is bittersweet for us, like for many others, with losses that we have had to endure as a family, and uncertainty of what the future may hold. But there has also been joy, with moments of beauty and being able to rise above challenges, to grow despite the suffering.
When our children were younger, Christmas was a perfectly orchestrated confection of cliches and artifice. As they – and I – get older, reality seems to creep in, to disturb our perfect traditions and carefully protected dreams, as beautiful and fragile as Christmas baubles. Easily breakable glass ornaments that show up the light, but also the darkness.
Rovaniemi is a town, too, of darkness and light. Declared (by, uh, themselves) the official home of Santa in 1985, its yuletide status follows a harsh history. A small town of 6,000 people when it was invaded by Russia in 1939, the town initially allied with Germany for protection, who in turn evacuated as the war progressed, razing the city to the ground and leaving behind landmines that killed several who attempted to return to their home.
Alvar Aalto, a Finnish architect tasked with responding to the devastation, conceived a “reindeer antler” street plan in 1945. It rapidly became an Arctic Circle holiday destination, cemented by a surprise visit by Eleanor Roosevelt in 1950. Today it is a wonderland of northern lights, snow and sleighs, with over a million visitors each year.
En route to Finland, its lights and spectacle, we found Germany would be an ideal stopover, purely for purposes of convenience in air travel.
I then realised my children had an opportunity to see what I once saw at their age – a reminder of the darkness that humankind is capable of.
Every nation has its dark chapter, but I have always respected the German people for being singular in acknowledging their past. I dimly remember the cold steel of the railways, the chill in the air that reminded me that something happened that should not have.
Concentration camp survivor Viktor Frankl, in his book Man’s Search for Meaning, offers many hard-won insights. The struggle to survive was won or lost depending on how people responded to their situation. Tragically, he noted that many seemed to maintain a fragile, baseless hope that they would be rescued before Christmas – which led to the horrific loss of many shortly after the unrealised milestone.
The horror of what he saw, however, inspired him to write about what made survival possible, including his own. Even in this darkest part of human history, he found compassion and humanity, which nourished the human spirit despite oppression. His critical insight – and the rationale for the title of the book – was that in the presence of abject suffering, there was an unparalleled potential for personal growth:
We must never forget that we may also find meaning in life even when confronted with a hopeless situation, when facing a fate that cannot be changed … There are situations in which one is cut off from the opportunity to do one’s work or enjoy one’s life; but what can never be ruled out is the unavoidability of suffering. In accepting this challenge to suffer bravely, life has a meaning up to the last moment, and it retains this meaning literally to the end.
Christmas is a story of hope, but it is also a story of suffering.
The biblical gospel of Matthew describes the aftermath of the birth of Jesus: the execution of the male children of Bethlehem aged under two years old, in a desperate attempt by King Herod to remove the prophesied king of the Jews. Known as the Massacre of the Innocents, its harsh memory is observed by many churches on the fourth day of Christmastide.
The pain and uncertainty of the world was well observed in the Christmas story. The only gospel that does not explicitly describe the Nativity – the book of John – summarises it in a single line: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
We forget that many Christmas traditions have their roots in why there are winter festivals in the first place. Held during the longest nights, the cruel cold took many lives each year. Humanity learned a long time ago to hold their loved ones dear, to show resilience in suffering, and to fight the darkness with light. To know what evil looks like, and to know what goodness is.
They are lessons we do well as a species not to forget, but to show to the next generation. So that we give not out of obligation, but out of thankfulness and joy. So we celebrate not out of ritual, but honest gratitude for the little miracles that life throws at us each day. To find peace amongst war. And to represent these truths to each other, and to ourselves. After all, as the big man says himself, at least according to his website:
“I’m an ambassador of good will, love and peace, and wish nothing but happiness to the people of the world.” – Santa Claus
Wish us luck on our holiday. Years ago, I was fortunate enough to see the northern lights for the first time, and marvelled at seeing what ancient humanity had seen for generations, telling each other different tales over the years as to what it meant. Nordic legends told of bridges to the afterlife, while the Finns spoke of a mythical firefox.
But I realise that I have changed too. I hope to see it again, decades later, a bit more bruised by the toils of life, but all the more grateful as a result. If we are lucky enough, our children shall see that which means so much more to me now.
Light dancing in the darkness.
I think it’ll be worth the cold.
Neil Jeyasingam is a Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry and is an Associate at the Centre for Public Christianity.