By Fr Alo Connaughton, Ballinacree, December 2024

Over the last 50 years I have spent Christmas in 10 different countries. At the end of September 2018 when I was leaving Bangkok (where I was working in the national training centre of the Catholic Church)  to go to teach a term in a similar institute in Beijing, some of the Vietnamese students said ‘On your way back at Christmas why don’t you come through Vietnam; many of your past students are there.”  Not something that had ocurred to me but, why not?

So two days before Christmas I arrived at the airport in Ho Chi Minh or Saigonas most of the locals still seem to call it.  Very soon I discovered there had been a bit of tension. About seven million Vietnamese are Catholics making up about 8% of the population.  At the beginning of December the civil authorities in Ho Chi Minh city had issued an order that no Christian symbols were to be seen publicly in the city – or erected in front of houses etc. The government is one of those communist regimes that is fairly anti-Christian but they often find that their plans backfire. In Vietnam the Catholics are well able to fight their corner.

The Christians, made such strong protests in every way possible way that the governor had to withdraw the order. As I walked around the city on those days around Christmas I saw scores of Marys, Josephs, cribs and Bethlehem scenes, bought and homemade, not only in windows and yards but sometimes creeping out on the footpaths.

That was well before Covid when people started to talk about the possibility of a meaningful Christmas. People can and do give it whatever meaning they wish … The Catholics of Saigon wanted to make it perfectly clear what Christmas was about for them.

I took part in two Christmas night Masses, one in a HIV hostel and the other in a parish church. On both occasions the celebrants were young Vietnames Camillian priests that had studied with me in Bangkok so a welcome was assured. A big part of the work of Camillians is care of the sick. 

A memorable part of the night was a trip home as pillion passenger on a motorbike steered by one of the students through bike-packed streets; zero room for mistakes. I don’t think it’s an offence to use your phone to take a photo from the back seat!

In the days after Christmas, some of the friends took me on a two-day drive to Dalat, a famous scenic city about 330 km to the north of Saigon. Among other things it is famous for its tapestries. What struck me on the drive was the beautifully illuminated churches in every town and village. This seems to be a Vietnamese speciality, the displays of lights were spectacular. No doubt it is one of the ways they proclaim to their Buddhist and atheist neighbours that they are celebrating the arrival of the Light of the World.

Over the years in Bangkok, Vietnamese students had sometimes spoken to me about the effects of America’s war on their country (1964-76 more or less). About 1,353, 000 people died in the Vietnam War; 282,000 of them were Americans the rest from Vietnam and its neighbours The US Air Force used the terrible Napalm bombs and sprayed 76 million litres of deadly poisonous herbicide (including Agent Orange) on the Vietnamese countryside to kill vegetation in order to be able to detect movement of insurgents. Laos was also sprayed liberally but this was always strongly denied by Washington – until finally admitted in 2014. The health of millions of people was damaged then and millions more suffer the consequences today. Thousands of US soldiers were also affected for life.

And yet … in spite of all that has happened the Vietnamese seem to be capable of freeing themselves from the past. In late 2023 the heads of state of the USA and Vietnam signed ‘an agreement for friendship and cooperation.’ The White House statement says  The United States supports a strong, independent, prosperous, and resilient Vietnam. Not quite the thinking of the Cold War years – which of course were anything but cold in  Southeast Asia.

I was struck by the hope a lot of the people I met had; not all of course, plenty of people still want to emigrate. Hope and optimism are two different things. Hope, some say,  consists in doing something because you think it is worth doing even if you are not too sure of success. Plenty of them back then, including ‘past pupils’ and some I occasionally hear of now, keep at it.