How do the Native American peoples of the
Pine Ridge Reservation celebrate Christmas?
Christmas is traditionally a white man’s celebration and not a ceremony that is traditional to any Native peoples. We as a different race have celebrated the birth of Jesus for centuries, and as now we are living in a very different world to that of ancient times, and even the near past, the true tradition of celebrating the birth of the Master is being lost each year to commercialism and materialism.
We all seem to say “It’s for the children!”Even me! I truly love seeing my grandchildren opening their presents on Christmas morning, but the real concept of what we are all supposed to be celebrating is slipping away with each passing year.
When the white man finally crushed the Lakota peoples hearts after firstly killing Chieftain Sitting Bull on Dec 15th 1890, then brutally killing Big Foot and his people at the Massacre at Wounded Knee on Dec 29th 1890, this gave rise to the whites truly trying to convert the people to the Christian ways.
The Catholic priests and nuns were given permission to take the children from families and try and crush their hearts and spirits by forcing them to become white. They cut their hair and made them wear white mans clothes and punished them if they spoke their own language, and all in the name of Christianity!!
Jesus said “Suffer the little children to come to him”. I am sure he did not mean beat them for being Indian!!
When the white man hit the America’s with the arrival of Columbus in 1492 and the subsequent invasions of Europeans, British, Irish., Welsh and other nationalities in the following centuries, the Natives were subjected to atrocities at the hands of these invaders, again all in the name of God and Christianity! The Natives were quite willing to meet these newcomers half way, and even learn all about this new religion they brought with them, but the whites were having none of this and in the name of God slaughtered whole tribes, deliberately gave smallpox infected blankets to kill them as well as bringing the white mans diseases, to which the Natives had no resistance at all!
How can one race of people be so willing to learn new ways, and yet others would not even contemplate the ways of the Native people and instead regarded them as filthy savages, when indeed it was the whites who were the savages and destroyers!
Today there are many Lakota people that practice the Christian ways, and also still follow their traditional ways too. They combine this quite successfully and seem perfectly happy in doing this. When you think about it, the Native American way of life is just that, a ‘WAY OF LIFE’.
They do not now, nor in the past worshiped any particular God or Idol, but revered life itself, thanking Grand Father Sun for his warmth and light, Mother Earth for her gift of life, in fact all living things which they still call their ‘Relatives’. This means from the tallest tree down to the tinniest ant. They have a saying ‘Mitakuye Oyasin’, which means for all my relatives.
I have spoken to several Native friends on the subject of ‘How do they celebrate Christmas?’ One friend said that she bakes a birthday cake for Jesus, to honour him just as they would do for a friend or relative of their own. Another said that he smoked his pipe that day to give thanks and send out good thoughts. The thought of celebrating the birth of Jesus and cooking a good meal is what most of them do. Feasting to honour someone in life or death is the traditional way for these people to do this, so Christmas is no different in that sense to them.
They accept that their children, that now grow up in a more modern world, however bad the hardships, do look forward to any presents they might get as any child would be at this time, and are very excited at this thought.
It is thought that the idea of the Christmas tree with tinsel and baubles hanging on it stems comes from the Natives people tradition of hanging offerings wrapped in the colours of the four directions on trees and bushes .The Cottonwood tree is placed at the centre of a Sundance arena, and before it is erected, the people place their offering bundles and pray ties on the tree so that these may be accepted and honoured by the Great Spirit during the ceremony.
It seems that although Christmas is not their tradition, the Lakota people still celebrate in their own way and are indeed still willing to combine Christianity with their own traditions in spite of what has happened to them in the past, and still goes on today.
If ever a race of people could be called forgiving in their nature, I think you can certainly put the Lakota people in this category!!
I will leave you with this thought and wish you all a Very Happy
Christmas and New Year.
Brenda
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