A Taste of Christmas

 by Dick Stanley

How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth.           -Psalm 119: 103

Christmas was less than three weeks away and I was on a temporary deployment in Iran. The Shah was still on his throne, so there were certainly no signs of the Christmas season anywhere I traveled throughout the country. I mentioned this to my assigned driver, who had escaped as an infant from Turkey during the Armenian genocide following World War I. This Armenian refugee was the only Christian I had encountered during my entire time in Iran, and it was comforting to know I could freely discuss religious issues with him without being turned in to the Shiite ayatollahs for proselytizing.

We returned to Tehran in time for the Iranian Thursday/Friday weekend. I was waiting for orders to depart Iran, hoping to return to Huntsville before Christmas so I could celebrate with my wife and children. No such orders awaited me and I prepared for another blasé weekend in Tehran. My driver noticed my despondency and invited me to his Armenian church for a Friday evening Christmas concert. Having no excuse to decline, I accepted his offer as a diversion from sitting in my hotel. Imagine my delight when the concert turned out to be Handel’s Messiah, in English, no less. 

Afterwards, I was invited to participate in what we in the South would call “supper on the grounds.” Each congregant approached the priest to receive a blessing and then a plate containing a mound of rice covered with steaming lamb topped with a raw egg. This was chelo kebab, an entree I had encountered frequently throughout Iran, and I looked forward to enjoying it again. But then the priest placed a small cross on the lamb and motioned me to sit at one of the tables in the church hall. As I sat down, I noticed some red and green glitter that was sprinkled on the meal; I subsequently learned that this was a special seasoning used only at Christmas to differentiate the taste from all other such meals served during the year. The taste was so unique, unlike anything I had ever tasted before in my forays on four continents. Being an inquisitive engineer, I asked my driver to explain the meaning of the cross and seasoning. He explained that the mound of rice represented the world, that God sent His son here to be the sacrificial Lamb for the salvation of the world, and the raw egg meant that the barriers between God and man had been broken forever. The special seasoning, used only at Christmas, was to insure that the eater would not mistake the special taste and meaning of the meal.

Every Christmas since the Iranian revolution, I have wondered what happened to my driver. Did he escape with his Christian brothers and sisters, maybe even reaching the then Soviet republic of Armenia in the Caucasus Mountains named for his ancestors and now a free country? If he did, I pray that he enjoyed many plates of that special meal I remember so well with its unique meaning as a truly real taste of Christmas.              

Dick Stanley and his wife Martha have been a part of the Cove Church family since 2002. He currently is a member of the First Impressions team and serves as leader of the Ends of the Earth missions team. He also is involved in Cove's creation of a water source for the Pokot tribe, Mt. Paka, Kenya.