By Priscila Lipciuc

I grew up in Communist Romania, where there was a state ban on religion, so “finding Christmas” wasn’t easy.

“Don’t use the word ‘Christmas’ at school or with people you don’t know,” I remember being told when I turned school age. We only used the word at home because some members of my extended family were old enough to have grown up before the ban and still secretly kept the holiday. With everyone else, the tree was to be called “the New Year tree.” Christmas was “the winter holiday.” If we children received gifts, there was no mention of Christmas attached.

I was only a few years old when we got our first tree. It had real candles on the branches, and each day for as long as it was up, my reward for being good was having the candles lit for a few minutes.

I remember, a few years later, looking at the only Orthodox icon in our house through the branches of the Christmas tree and wondering if there was any connection between the two. Who is that pictured there? Why do we keep a picture of someone we don’t know?

I also remember the first Christmas I celebrated in the countryside with other members of my family. The people there had a bit more freedom, and we listened to Christmas carolers sing about the first Christmas. It was beautiful, but it didn’t make much sense to me.

It wasn’t until I was nearly grown and the Communist regime had collapsed that I prayed to accept Jesus as my Savior and got a chance to learn about Christmas and other truths from the Bible.

Several years later I became a full-time Christian volunteer and celebrated my first Christmas in a real Christian way, thanking God for sending us Jesus and sharing the message of His love with others. That was bliss!

Then I got married and I became a mother. Our little apartment was filled with Christmas music and every corner was decorated, but my face was tearstained most of the time. I was happy, yes, but my heart also broke at the thought of God having to resort to giving up His only begotten Son, Jesus, to save us. You see, since becoming a mother, the thought of giving my own dear Emanuel for someone else was more than I could bear. I might choose to give my own life for another one day, but never my son’s!

The thought of God having to let go of His only Son, knowing what was to befall Him, was overwhelming. I was happy and thankful that God chose to do what He did, but it also broke my heart. The joy was there—the ever-present joy of Christmas—but so was the realization of the magnitude of the sacrifice that God made for us.

Every Christmas I still shed a few tears when I remember the pain behind our joy, but the joy far outweighs the sadness. And that’s as it should be. It was a price God was happy to pay, for our sakes! 

Priscila Lipciuc is a volunteer with the Family International in Romania.

Welcome, all wonders in one sight!

Eternity shut in a span.

Summer in winter. Day in night.

Heaven in earth, and God in man!

Great little one, whose all-embracing birth

Lifts earth to heaven, stoops heaven to earth.

—Richard Crashaw (1613–1649)