Our family’s Christmas traditions!

From where did our Christmas traditions come?

In a letter my mother wrote from Ceylon on Christmas day 1950, she shared how our family had spent the last few Christmases.

“This was the best Christmas we’ve celebrated since we left Finland (in March 1946).

We have not lived in the same house two Christmases in a row.

Christmas 1946, I was with the children on board the Marine Falcon. We had just left Seattle and were on our way to Shanghai. Toimi would meet us there.

Christmas 1947, we had fled the Mao-Nationalistic war from Shenyang in Manchuria in September and arrived in Kunming late October. 

We spent that Christmas in two rooms at a hospital hostel – with rats.

Christmas 1948 we were still Kunming but had moved to different houses twice.

1049 December. Last evacuation flight from Kunming to Hongkong. 

Christmas 1949 the children and I were refugees, alone in Hongkong. We had no news from Toimi in Kunming. We did not know if he was alive.

Now we are all together since Toimi arrived in Ceylon in October this year.

My parents had followed the One who was born in a stable.

Who became a refugee when he was little.

Who said to one who wished to follow Him: “Foxes have dens to live in, and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place even to lay his head.”