Thoughts on Russian Christmas

My head is more often filled with random narrative phrases than not; when I walk through a city, sit and have tea with friends, even when I'm trying to sleep, I paint the scene with words in my head. Certain phrases will stick longer than others, and those that I like most end up either in my journal and/or (now that I'm posting again) on this blog. Sometimes I narrate my life in third person, other times I work out metaphors to represent the landscape, and occasionally I'll map out words to describe a world completely irrelevant to the one I live.  It's a rare moment that leaves me wordless, but that's exactly what happened at the Russian Orthodox Christmas services (we first went to the Kazan cathedral and later to the St. Nicholas cathedral) today. The singing, the architecture, the fixtures: they took my words away. I pulled out my journal this afternoon, as I usually do when I've been somewhere I think is worth remembering, and had no words to put on paper. My usually word-cluttered head was filled with nothing but screenshot memories of gold decorations and deep Russian vocals.

I type and delete, type and delete, unable to find the right words to describe what I saw, or rather, what I felt at the services. More than anything, I felt humble, even reverent. I'm not a religious person and often find organized religion frustrating, but the importance of these services to the people around me in the cathedrals today caused me to think a bit deeper about the presence of religion - Orthodox Christianity in particular - in maintaining the cultural identity of a people and place. I felt loss when Victoria and I discussed the inability of many Russians to practice their religion during the Soviet years, and mourned the many churches long forgotten due to the communist regime. I felt sadness comparing the clearly deep personal reverence of Russian Orthodox Christmas with the hallmark holiday I have always celebrated at home. Not because I would take back a single one of my wonderful Christmas memories, but because I would never be able to fully comprehend the relationship between the church-goers around me and the god to whom they are so faithful. I am filled, now more so than I have ever been, with a deep respect for those who maintain such historic religious traditions. 

Love from St. Petersburg,
Shonabell