By Richard Lee

hat was it like celebrating Christmas growing up as an Asian American?

Someone recently asked me that question and frankly, I didn’t have an answer for them. So, I began trying to jog my brain loose of these locked away memories from 40 years ago. Faded memories like the 3x5 photos that captured them, tucked away in an obscure drawer in my parent’s home.

As is my nature, when I don’t know the answer to things, I crowdsource. So, I called up a bunch of friends and asked them about their experience celebrating Christmas growing up as an Asian American. Was there anything specific to our culture that made our celebration of Christmas unique?

The fascinating thing that I learned from people was that for the most part there weren't a lot of things that made Christmas feel authentically Asian, or in my case, Korean.

My White Christmas

A few of them mentioned how their memories of Christmas were especially precious because for many immigrant families who owned small businesses, Christmas may have been one of the few days out of the year where someone wasn't going to work. It was one of the few days in their childhood where the family was all together in the house without someone having to go to work.

Others commented that Christmas just wasn't a very big deal in their home. No tree or decorations, maybe a string of lights, but that was about it. No extravagant gifts. For many immigrant homes, there wasn't any discretionary money available for the non-essentials.

In talking to friends, what I found was that many of them didn’t have a classic Christmas experience as Asian Americans. In contrast, I grew up with what I knew to be a pretty conventional Christmas. We had the tree, the gifts, the lights, the frosted snow on the windows. We ate candy canes, homemade cookies and drank hot cocoa. Gratefully, the fruit cake did not make the cultural leap into our home.

For all intents and purposes, our Christmas was very much like the Christmas of any one of my White friends. But, of course it was. Because that was exactly the point. When my parents were growing up in Korea, they didn’t celebrate Christmas the same way. They didn't have the tree and tons of presents and the week off from work and school. Christmas in Korea is not like it is in America. But, when my parents were faced with raising their Korean American children here in America, they chose to give us the most authentically American experience they could.

And that meant that the Christmas experience would be an American experience. Which meant for us, living in suburban upper middle class New Jersey... that it would be a White Christmas.

Now, I'm not trying to racialize Christmas here, but what I mean to say is that when my parents wanted to "fit in" in our neighborhood, they took their cues from the White neighbors. In a way, setting up a Christmas tree was an act of assimilation to the majority culture. They probably wouldn't say it this way, but we wanted a White Christmas and that's exactly what we got. We did what we were supposed to do to celebrate Christmas, even if we didn’t fully understand it all. [Case in point: that fruitcake joke I made earlier? Well, I’ve never had fruitcake, I’ve never seen fruitcake, I just know that fruitcake is a joke you make around the holidays. See? We were very good at assimilating.]

In fact, the church that I grew up in, a first-generation immigrant Korean church, made pretty much the same choice around Christmas. I remember the church bringing in a Santa Claus to distribute gifts to the children of the church. And if you need an exclamation point on this, consider: When that Korean church wanted to have Santa come to give out those gifts, they had to outsource Santa Claus. We had to go to a sister church of ours and ask a White member to dress up as Santa. Because, in America Santa Claus is White.

Now, hopefully, you are seeing some of the ironies here. An Asian church with Asian people with Asian culture has to outsource a White Santa Claus to celebrate a White Christmas. We had to find someone white in order to “properly” celebrate Christmas. The lesson here to me is that the act of assimilating to American culture is so often subject to the authority of a White Santa Claus, or a White boss, or a White PTA president. You get the point.

Inside Out

But there’s another bit of irony here. We were in a church! What are we doing bringing Santa Claus around during Christmas in a church? Isn’t the church supposed to preach against the commercialization of Christmas during the holiday season? Aren’t we supposed to keep Christ in Christmas? Well, yes, but there are a few things going on. First of all, since this was way back in the 80s, the Christmas season was not nearly as commercialized as it is today. “Black Friday” shopping wasn’t even a widely-used term back in the 80s. Even well into the 90s, Black Friday still wasn’t the busiest shopping day of the year. So, I’d venture to guess that the unofficial fight between Santa and Jesus over Christmas wasn’t in full swing back then.

However, there’s an even greater irony here and one with much more grave ramifications. It’s not just that Asians were trying to assimilate through celebrating a White Christmas. It’s not just that the church was using a secular mascot to celebrate a fundamentally religious holiday. No, the greatest irony here is that Christmas is a celebration of the Incarnation. The birth of Christ is about God coming down to earth to reach those on the outside. Jesus’ being born in a barn and placed in a manger was God’s way of saying, “I’m going to reach the most humble and overlooked person by being born in the most humble and overlooked way.” No one would mistake Christ for a king while he was born amongst animals.

This day is meant to commemorate God reaching those on the outside, God leaving his place of power and privilege, and leaving that behind and becoming the lowliest to reach the lowliest. The Incarnation, becoming IN FLESH a human being. God leaving the INSIDE to reach those on the OUTSIDE. A day that is meant to commemorate that incarnation was being celebrated by those ON THE OUTSIDE trying to assimilate and become more like those ON THE INSIDE. Korean immigrants on the outside of society, trying to be like those on the inside as we celebrate the holiday whose meaning is exactly the opposite.

The irony here is that Christmas is about reaching those on the OUTSIDE, the unreachable, those that can’t reach for themselves. Look at what the Bible says in Philippians 2:6-8. Speaking of Jesus, the apostle Paul writes:

Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross! (NIV)

To bring this home even more, let’s look at how these verses are translated in the Message translation:

He had equal status with God but didn’t think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn’t claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death—and the worst kind of death at that—a crucifixion.

The story of Christmas, the story of Jesus’ birth, the Incarnation is about leaving the INSIDE to reach those on the OUTSIDE. Those on the inside, in this case, Christ, reaching those on the outside, in this case, us. So what is the irony of my Asian American immigrant church experience of our assimilated American White Christmas? What’s the one thing alone that makes that White Santa Claus in a Korean church the antithesis of Christmas? It’s not the over-commercialization of Christmas or the distraction away from Jesus’ birth. No, if there is one thing that makes it the antithesis of the Christmas story, is that we were celebrating the ultimate act of those on the inside reaching those on the outside, BY those on the outside reaching for those on the inside.

But reading and reflecting on Philippians 2:6-8 doesn’t quite hit home as directly until you include v. 5. Which, in the NIV reads like this: “In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus.”

The story of Christmas INCLUDES the spirit and command of Philippians 2:5 which says, “have the same mindset as Christ Jesus.” In other words, it’s fine to look at Christ’s incarnation and say thank you, but it takes on a whole new meaning when you recognize that we need to have the same attitude. We need to have the same submission to sacrifice, the same posture of incarnation in the same way that Christ did for us.

An Uncomfortable Incarnation

Christmas is Christ reaching out from his place of privilege and initiating relationships with those on the outside. 2 Corinthians 5:18 states this plainly for us: “All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation” (NIV). You have been reconciled in order to reconcile others. You have been saved in order to save others. You have been incarnated in order to incarnate to others.

All of this sounds well and good and neat and tidy. Because the story of Christmas is a beautiful story that deserves telling and retelling every year. It deserves all of the adorable renderings of ceramic figurines and oil paintings. But hold on. Because the true picture of the incarnation is maybe a little bit different than what we’re always led to believe. It’s a whole lot messier and more complicated and more difficult than what we may think.

If we’re taking our cues from the Incarnation of Christmas, then we can quickly see the Incarnation is uncomfortable. Luke 2:7 tells the story of Jesus’ birth like this: “and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.” There was no room for Mary and Joseph in the house and so they had to sleep with the animals. When Mary gave birth to Jesus, he was placed in a manger, or a feeding trough. The picture of Mary and Joseph holding a serene, swaddled, ceramic Jesus, just doesn’t jive with the reality of the situation.

First of all, Jesus was born. As a human baby. Through the birthing process, I’ve witnessed this event twice and let me tell you, as precious a moment as it was, for sure, I was definitely not looking to immortalize it in figurine form.

But Jesus wasn’t just born as a human baby through the birthing process. He was also born among animals. There was probably a lot of hay and dirt and feed and waste and flies and again not the pristine picture of beauty that we may be used to. The Incarnation is Uncomfortable.

I remember when I took a team from my church to a small village in the mountains of Saltillo, Mexico. This town was tiny. It was maybe 300 people total, had more cows than cars, and no paved roads. By this time, I had been in this village many times over the years, but for many on our team, this was their first time. I remember the first night of the trip, while we were debriefing, one of our team members looked like a deer in headlights, he wasn’t breathing right, he wasn’t blinking. He had left everything that was comfortable and found himself in this sleepy town in the hills of Mexico and his body just was not adjusting. Over time, of course, he did adjust and he was one of the most interactive and involved members of our team. But not that first night. Because he LEFT what was comfortable and moved into the Uncomfortable.

As we seek to “have the same attitude as Jesus Christ,” as we seek to incarnate ourselves to others, it’s going to make us uncomfortable. The act of incarnation is the act of reaching those that aren’t being reached. It’s reaching for those that are on the outside. To whatever extent you’re on the “inside”, reaching those on the outside will draw you OUT of the inside. Which will make us uncomfortable. Because to whatever extent you’re on the INSIDE, you’re going to have to leave the comfort of being on the inside. To reach others who are also not on the INSIDE. That’s what incarnation is.

The Gradient of Privilege

There is a lot of talk today about “privilege.” About White privilege and male privilege and wealth privilege. And I affirm that it is a helpful corrective to some of the societal systems that have been built up over years and decades and centuries. But I think we can mistake societal privilege systems for individual privilege situations. I think that we make a mistake to think of the lines of individual privilege, or the boundaries around who we consider privileged. We make these lines solid lines. If you’re White, you’re privileged and if you’re not white, then you’re not. And if you’re White, you can’t talk about growing up without privilege — God forbid! — because, “you’re White and you were born with privilege.”

However, the problem with drawing with solid lines of privilege is that we fail to realize that we all live along a gradient of privilege. And every single one of us… has grown up with privilege by some measure and are surrounded by people who are less privileged than us. And it’s also true that every single one of us has grown up without privilege by some measure and are surrounded by people who are more privileged than us. Does race play a part in it? Of course it does! Does gender? Yes. Does education and wealth and city of birth and occupation and religion and sexual orientation? Of course it does. It all does.

But what isn’t helpful for us as individuals who are being challenged by the Incarnation is to draw SOLID lines of privilege around us or those we seek to reach. I am a second- generation Korean American male born in the suburbs of New Jersey. And honestly, as an Asian American, I don’t fit neatly into the bifurcated race narrative in America. Am I a person of color? Yes. Am I a person of privilege? Also, yes. So in situations like mine, you can see the need to avoid drawing solid lines of privilege around individuals because we don’t necessarily fit. The gradient line is much more helpful.

Asian Americans must not sit out this race conversation in America. Because many of us know what it means to be kept on the outside as a person of color and we also know what it means to be allowed on the inside as a person of privilege.

As Asians, we cannot sit back and hope that we are accepted by the White communities, and the White bosses and the White churches. We cannot keep our heads down and not make trouble and hope that we are assimilated enough to go to the best schools and get the best jobs and even get promoted to Sr. Vice President one day. We cannot sit back and watch as our black brothers and sisters fight and die in the streets for the rights of all people of color. We can no longer hide behind our white friends and silently enjoy the invisibility of assimilation. And we can no longer hide behind our black and brown friends and silently enjoy the progress of their struggle. Incarnation for us, as Asian Americans, will make us uncomfortable. Because we are leaving the INSIDE and reaching those on the OUTSIDE.

But, for all of us, that is the picture of incarnation, isn’t it? Leaving the INSIDE and reaching those on the OUTSIDE. If we are to take this challenge of incarnation seriously, if we are waking up to where we sit on the gradient of privilege, if you’re anything like me, you’re saying to yourself, “I need to LEAN into these issues and learn and grow and listen and grieve.”

But, I’m telling you, we can’t “lean into” these issues. We can’t dip our toe in over the line and test the water on the outside. Jesus didn’t dip his toe in this humanity thing. He didn’t stand on a cloud and zip around the world and say, “How’s it going down there? I really want to lean into your experience as a human” No, Jesus came all the way down and got real and messy and uncomfortable with his incarnation.

So, you can’t “lean into” these issues. You have to “leave into” these issues. You have to get up and leave your place of privilege on the inside and enter into and sit with and listen to and grieve with those on the outside. Find those around you on the outside and enter into their space and their experience.With respect and honor and dignity, learn from and listen to them.

Now, let me be clear, this isn’t just for white people. If you’re a person of color listening to this and thinking, “Oh phew! I’m on the outside, and so I don’t need to leave. Other people need to leave to reach me.” Remember, we are not drawing solid lines of privilege here. We’re all on a gradient. And yes, there may be a lot of people around you that enjoy privileges that you don’t have, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t people in your community, in your church, in your workplace, in your neighborhood that you aren’t called to LEAVE and go and sit with them.

Reaching to Restore

Finally, remember, the Incarnation doesn’t just make us uncomfortable and it doesn’t just call us to leave, but it also restores. The whole purpose of the Incarnation was to reach those on the outside in order to bring restoration.

This Jesus who left his deity to become a human and become a servant even to the point of death and even death on a cross. God restores him to his rightful place. Look at what Philippians 2:9 says,

“Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name.”

God restored Jesus to his rightful place. And through his death, we are restored to God through Jesus.

The whole point of the Incarnation is not for God to reach down, but for him to reach and lift us up. He wants to restore the rightful order of things. So our act of incarnation is not to stoop to those on the outside, but to restore the rightful order of things and bring those on the outside to the inside together with us.

Friends, if you’re looking around this country and are tired of how disagreement leads to disengagement and division, then as people of God, we are called to the Incarnation. We are called to leave our place of privilege, embrace the uncomfortable, and seek the restoration that God has for those on the outside.

This year, during this season of Advent, we celebrate not just Christ’s arrival, but all that he left in order to restore us. And we take up the challenge to “have the same mindset as Christ Jesus” to reach and restore those around us.

Photo by Dan Kiefer on Unsplash

Richard Lee is a sought-after speaker on issues of justice and the church. He serves as the global officer of public engagement with International Justice Mission and is the host of The Pursuit with Richard Lee podcast, featuring unfiltered conversations with faith leaders about their journey to pursue God. His talk “Slavery Still Exists. Here’s How to End It.” can be found on TED.com. You can follow him on social: @richardl.ee on IG & @richardl_ee on twitter.