Pandemic brings renewed meaning to holidays, religious traditions this year
One weekend in December in a typical year, 200 people pack into pews at a Hales Corners church and wait.
The lights go down. Then a girl dressed in white enters the chapel, a crown of candles atop her head. A procession of children and teens follows, holding candles and singing.
The image is a familiar one for Sonia Hummel, who has run the annual program celebrating the Scandinavian festival of lights known as St. Lucia Day in the Milwaukee area for 25 years.
It’s a mainstay of the Christmas season for many in the area with Swedish ancestry, bonding the families who participate and connecting audience members to their heritage.
The pandemic forced Hummel to convert it to a virtual presentation this year. Bringing light to the darkness feels symbolic each chilly December, but it’s especially meaningful in 2020.
“You can’t really put words to what we’re missing,” she said.
But in all that’s been lost this year, the pandemic has reinforced messages of perseverance, hope and community, local faith leaders say. They believe the world will emerge stronger in the new year.
Judaism’s lessons ‘punctuated with an exclamation point’
Guiding many in the Jewish community through the challenges of the year has been the core value of Pikuach nefesh: “A human life is more valuable than anything else.”
Rabbi Rachel Marks, the associate rabbi at Congregation Shalom in Milwaukee, said it’s been a helpful lens through which to view the restrictions on gatherings and, early on, the closure of the synagogue.
“The Jewish tradition is thousands of years old, and the wisdom is applicable to our lives in any circumstance,” Marks said.
“It’s been really inspiring to look at the texts with fresh eyes, based on what’s happening now, and to be able to read it and think, ‘Oh my goodness, these texts are talking directly to us,’” she said.
Relevant lessons appear everywhere, Marks said, from the weekly Torah readings to the most popular holidays. Hanukkah focuses on the power of light, and the High Holy Days — celebrated in the fall this year — center around introspection and one’s own mortality.
“Their meanings have been punctuated with an exclamation point this year,” she said. “We can feel it more deeply than ever before.”
Funerals have been Marks’ most devastating task of the pandemic. People must mourn their loved ones alone, with friends and family sitting shiva over Zoom. She’s never more appreciated the value of a comforting hug.
She’s also discovered virtual gatherings make it easier for people to attend funerals no matter their location.
Alongside so much tragedy, Marks has also seen creativity and opportunity. Faith has blossomed in some homes, she said, especially after young families in the congregation received kits with recipes, reading materials and hands-on activities designed to bolster Jewish education.
Many have reached out to her with text messages and photos, proud of what they accomplished as a family.
There, too, Marks finds a relevant Jewish teaching: to make one’s home like a small temple.
“Those kinds of things have been really powerful,” she said.
Vibrant, social Muslim community finds greater appreciation in friends and family
When everything closed in March, a sense of isolation replaced the wide, vibrant social networks many of Milwaukee’s Muslim families value deeply.
Before the pandemic, weddings with several hundred attendees were common. The Islamic Society of Milwaukee used to fill its prayer hall with 1,000 people at a time. Friends and extended family dropped by homes for coffee unannounced.
Janan Najeeb, president of the Milwaukee Muslim Women’s Coalition, said people often tell her how much more they appreciate their family, friendships and close-knit community now. Some in the community have died from COVID-19.
“I think there’s a realization that life is short,” Najeeb said, and that it’s important to “take each day and really value it.”
During a typical month of Ramadan, friends gather at each others’ homes to break their fast and congregate at mosques for evening prayer.
With her sons home from school this spring and the pandemic nixing any Ramadan plans, Najeeb spent time cooking with them and having “great conversations” they wouldn’t have otherwise had time for in their busy schedules.
For all the anguish the virus has brought, it also provided time away from the so-called rat race, she said, to reflect on family and faith.
“Although yes we did miss the community and being with the community, it was a completely different experience to just be with family,” Najeeb said of Ramadan this year. “There was definitely a greater appreciation of how important family is.”
The pause on in-person prayer at the Islamic Society of Milwaukee also sparked a discussion over how to proceed safely while continuing to offer the daily prayers crucial to the faith.
“The single most important tenet of Islamic law is the preservation of life,” Najeeb said. “Everything has to be adjusted when the issue of how to preserve life becomes foremost.”
The refugee community has been hit especially hard by the virus, Najeeb said.
It’s hard to contain the spread of the virus in a population that, in general, needs more education about public health and often lives in cramped quarters with multiple generations of one family, Najeeb said. Many refugees don’t have the option to work from home, and some factories have failed to safeguard against outbreaks.
In the new year, the damage and isolation the pandemic has inflicted on the vulnerable will become even clearer, Najeeb said.
“There’s going to have to be a point where we end up picking up the pieces,” she said.
Christmas message remains steadfast, hopeful
As Christmas nears, Christian leaders and their congregations are grappling with the pain and loss of the pandemic too.
Marcus Arrington, senior pastor at Parklawn Assembly of God Church in Milwaukee, said it’s been crucial to reach out to isolated, older members of the congregation who don’t use the internet.
It’s also been important to find those who have fallen away from the church and need assistance. Arrington said those on the fringes are the most at-risk: they lack support in the time they need it most.
“Regardless of a person’s faith tradition, life happens, tragedy strikes,” Arrington said. “The deeper a person’s roots (in faith), the better their chances are of being able to withstand the galeforce winds that do blow.”
He’s been impressed by the resilience of his congregation over the course of the pandemic. Parklawn is situated on Milwaukee’s north side, where COVID-19 has intensified the area’s existing challenges with poverty and gun violence.
In his first Christmas as senior pastor, Arrington knows his message will be welcome. Jesus’ birth represents hope, promise and opportunity, he said.
“His story reminds us that beautiful things can be born in imperfect conditions,” Arrington said. “I think people want to know that.”
For Pastor Ernest Martinez of ALMAS Ministries on Milwaukee’s south side, the pandemic hasn’t changed the Christmas story. It’s been the same message of hope for 2,000 years, he said.
“It’s always been a joyous season for us,” he said. “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.”
As COVID-19 has ravaged other communities of color, the Latino community on the south side has been hit disproportionately hard. People who identify as Hispanic or Latino make up 29% of the city’s COVID-19 cases but only 19% of the population, according to city health department and U.S. Census data.
Martinez said he is thankful his congregation, which is bilingual, has not had any members die from the virus. The pandemic has brought so many tragedies, but Martinez said it also has strengthened the congregation’s spirit.
“When it’s all said and done, we’re going to come out on top and we will have the victory,” he said.
Making a new, better ‘normal’
Sonia Hummel is looking forward to next year when her “Lucia family” can be back together once again in Whitnall Park Lutheran Church in Hales Corners. For Hummel, St. Lucia Day is more exciting than Christmas morning.
This year she missed seeing the kids’ joy and the interest of audience members connecting with their heritage. When her own kids were younger, the family would wake up before dawn and deliver cookies to friends’ homes.
This year, though, she got an opportunity she’d normally be too busy to do. Hummel joined a St. Lucia Day Zoom call with her family around the world, from the East Coast to Sweden to Vietnam.
Hummel gained something new even as her community’s traditions were lost — a theme of so many of the religious holidays this year.
Those experiences and realizations and moments of new appreciation should prompt the world to grow in the new year, some religious leaders said.
“Once we ‘go back to normal,’ I hope that we don’t go back to normal,” Marks, the rabbi, said.
From racism to inequities in health care, “the coronavirus has shone a light on many of the different ills of our society,” she said.
Najeeb, of the Milwaukee Muslim Women’s Coalition, agrees. She’s seen the struggles of those in poverty compounded, but she’s also seen people who were suffering in their own lives help others in need.
It “just gave a whole new outlook on what is important in life,” Najeeb said. “If we’ve learned anything, it’s to take that and build on that.”
Ahead, Najeeb and Marks see an unwavering light in the darkness.
“I hope that we’ll be able to address it and not just go back to the way that things were, but come out stronger,” Marks said.