Last week, we heard from AU students about their favorite Christmas memories. This week, I was fortunate enough to sit down with our university’s very own president, Andrea Luxton, Ph.D. in English, who happily shared her thoughts and experiences during the Christmas season.
Do you have any favorite parts of Christmas in general, or perhaps, the December holiday season?
Well, I love the Christmas season because everything's just a little more peaceful. But for me, especially, it’s all about the snow. To me, snow means being warm with family and friends, so that feeling during Christmas is something I truly love.
The image of the nativity has also been very important to me. It allows you to think a little more about what it really means and what Christmas is about.
What does Christmas mean to you?
I've never really gotten into the commercialization of Christmas. It really has been for me a very spiritual time of year––a time to simply reflect on Christ but to do that in a setting with family or with friends. I love some of the poems that exist about Christmas––such as some of the well-known Christmas carols––and I think together, they frame what’s important about life. I suppose that’s where the meaning comes from for me; it’s lovely.
Do you have any favorite Christmas memories from over the years?
When I go back to when I lived in England, growing up, we did a lot of Christmas caroling door-to-door and collected donations for a charity or for church. Going out with the group, traveling door-to-door, caroling outside the doors of homes, especially when there were young children to meet in a home, were all special moments. Sometimes we would even get invited into homes to sing as a group! I played the clarinet at the time, and if it wasn’t too cold, I would sometimes take it with me to play as well.
Another memory I have is with an aunt who lived in the far west area of England, which is more like a dark moor. She lived in an old farmhouse really in the middle of nowhere, and sometimes I would go and spend Christmas with her. She would often find a Christmas tree somewhere way up on the moors that she’d want in her house, so she would wait for me to arrive so we could walk across the moors together. They were kind of undulating and bland, but we’d find this Christmas tree, dig it up, and carry it all the way back to her home––about a mile or so!
Another time, my aunt wanted holly, so we did this whole process again on this little, very muddy lane since you couldn’t drive there. This spot had holly bushes everywhere, so we would cut down a bunch and bring it home to decorate with. When we would arrive back, there wasn’t a lot of heat in my aunt’s home. But there was this huge fireplace, so we would sit down by a warm fire and enjoy each other’s company.
Are there any holiday traditions that you continue now?
I do have some involving decorations. One of the things I have is a Christmas village I collected when I first went to Canada about twenty years ago. It’s a display with lots of different houses, characters, and snow. I always put it up every Christmas and it tends to stay up at least until the end of January! Other than that, since I’ve been moving around so often and spending Christmas with different people, I wouldn’t say there’s any one thing that I “must” do every year, but just having good company is very important to me.
Do you have a favorite Christmas song or carol? Or perhaps a favorite Christmas movie?
“It’s a Wonderful Life” is one movie I must see every year! Even though I know what’s going to happen and it’s an older movie, I like to watch it every year.
As for carols, there is a lot that I like! In terms of the ones that I love, there’s “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,” and “Silent Night” is just one you must hear during the holidays, as well as “O Holy Night.” Just from the beauty of the piece, “O Holy Night” may be my favorite.
Do you have any special Christmas wishes or final thoughts that you would like to share with our student readers?
I think in our current environment, my Christmas wish, not just for me, but for our whole campus, is related to another song I like. It comes from a poem by Alfred Tennyson in which he describes a lot of Christmas scenes. One of them is a scene for the new year which he goes into with a lot of grief. He is working his grief out in the poem “In Memoriam,” but then he gets to his vision of the new year. There’s a part that goes “ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,” when talking about grief and pain, and there’s this encouragement to “ring in” the new and all the possibilities of the next year.
Of all the things that have happened in the last couple of years, what particularly disturbs me most is the anger and hate that people have increasingly thrown at each other. On social media, the language people use, and the way others respond to things they don’t like is just filled with threats of violence and aggression. And if I had a wish, it is that we use the message of Christmas––which is more about gentleness, giving to others, and caring––as something that we take in our hearts beyond Christmas and into the New Year. I hope that this spirit for how we treat each other becomes more apparent on an ongoing basis.
The Student Movement is the official student newspaper of Andrews University. Opinions expressed in the Student Movement are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors, Andrews University or the Seventh-day Adventist church.