Over the next week, Eternity will feature four missionary families and their experience of Christmas away from Australia. First up is the Sonnemans, who’ve been in Pakistan with CMS since 2001. Based in Islamabad, Steve teaches at the local Bible college and works at St Thomas’ Islamabad. Jenny spends time with families from the children’s school and church communities, running courses and Bible studies.

Steve and Jenny Sonneman and their two kids, Pakistan with CMS

Christmas is celebrated in a huge way by the Christian community in Pakistan. Just as the Muslims around us love to celebrate their festivals, the Christians enjoy the season of Christmas.

Most Christian communities will decorate their churches at the start of December, and start making plans for the services.

There are carols services a week or so before Christmas and often the congregation are invited to be involved in small family groups or to form choirs to perform their favourite carols. They have candles and the events are very festive. Being winter here, people rug up well.

There is a big service at most churches on Christmas day  and sometimes the church will host a lunch meal for everyone, large pots of streaming biriani rice.

Singing carols

Many families do not give out presents, or have the idea of Santa bringing presents, but instead each member of the family will receive a new set of clothes to wear. This is something the women and children in particular look forward to.

If families can afford it, they love to decorate their houses with traditional western Christmas colours, red and green. Some will string fairy lights around their homes, so they are lit up every night for all the neighbours to enjoy. Many Christian schools perform the nativity play during December, and churches do too. It is important to re-tell the story of the birth of Jesus.

We normally decorate a tree for Christmas and have a nativity scene on display. We enjoy the church services, and usually have lunch and dinner with friends from church, at our house or theirs.

Lights on a house in Islamabad

Along with these events, we lead a carol service for the Australian Diplomats, at the High Commissioner’s house. We choose the songs and our children recite passages from the Bible about the birth of Jesus and Steve does a short sermon. It’s a good way to share the story with people who don’t usually go to church. Usually we have a big party for the children from the school, and read a short story about the birth of Jesus, and talk about the meaning of Christmas. Many of the children who come are from Muslim backgrounds.

We miss celebrating with our parents and now the kids miss their grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. But in many ways, it is more joyful here and the focus is on the story of Jesus rather than on Santa and other traditions.

We have set up our own traditions, like having a birthday cake on the 25th and singing Happy Birthday to Jesus. We try to include friends in our celebrations, especially the other foreigners here who are single or new. God is gracious and has given us a new family here to have fellowship and festivals with. We usually Skype our parents on Christmas day and send lots of photos of the things we are doing, this helps us stay to celebrate with them too.

The Sonneman’s profile on CMS – why not pray for the Sonneman’s today?