Christmas at Sea

For the past six weeks, the focus of my ship-visiting has undertaken a dramatic change. I've gone from exercising a ministry of presence to one of presents (I'm so sorry, I couldn't pass that one up). One of SCI's biggest operations is called Christmas at Sea. Its mission is to collect hand-knit scarves, hats, vests, etc. and distribute them (along with other things like toiletries and playing cards and shoelaces...) as individually wrapped gifts for every seafarer that comes into port between November and January. It comes to some 20,000 gifts, distributed by the five of us chaplains. It has pretty much taken over our lives. 

Every morning, we load up our vans with CAS boxes and head off to the ships as usual. After staggering across the straddle fields with an enormous stack of heavy boxes (which, as I'm sure you can imagine, only exacerbates my perpetual fear of being squashed by a gantry crane), we deposit them at the foot of the gangway and look pleadingly up at the gangway officer in the hopes that he'll take pity on us and come down to carry them for us. And then the fun begins.

"What's this, mum? Provisions?" is the inevitable question. "No, no," we reply, "something better. Christmas gifts!" The initial response is always confusion. "...for captain?" "No, for everyone! One for each crew member!" The best moment is always watching the look of dawning comprehension as they realize that, in a world where 90% of people who climb their gangway only make their lives more difficult, someone has come to bring them gifts. There is, then, much excited jabbering (in whatever their native language is; usually Tagalog) into the radios, and a subsequent flood of people coming to see the gifts and ceremonially process them into the ship's office. 

A surprising number of times they'll carefully stow them in a corner and wait until Dec. 25 to distribute them. But every once in a while, there'll be a crew that rips open the boxes and excavates the contents immediately. Since each hat/scarf set is hand-made, there's always an interesting variety of colors, and watching them argue (usually amicably, though with exceptions...) over who gets what is like watching a flock of kindergartners bicker over crayons. "Does it look good on me?" asks a squat Filipino engineer, whose neon green hat clashes vividly with his orange jumpsuit. 5 seconds later, the green hat is snatched off his head and replaced with a rainbow striped one. Hats and scarves fly through the air as the seafarers swap again and again. 

The reason we distribute for three months instead of just one is simple: most ships have 3 month long routes (and others have no route at all, but just go wherever the business is). Even with the long distribution window, there are countless thousands of seafarers who get no gifts at all. In a consumer-oriented society where Christmas decorations arrive to storefronts the day after Halloween, it's a welcome change to be able to celebrate Christmas early for a very good reason. And, while I'll be the first to tell you how tired I am of lugging around all those f***ing boxes, I'll also say without hesitation that watching the seafarers light up with joy when they discover what's inside them hasn't yet gotten old.