How Finnish churches tell thousands of kids about Christmas
Children and parents watch the Christmas show. Photo Cédric Placentino
Northern Europe
What would you do if you came face to face with a threatening Roman soldier? This is what thousands of Finnish children have experienced in recent days.
But fear not! The sword is fake, and the soldier is an actor. The children have travelled back in time to the first Christmas, in the Finnish event Aikamatka ensimmäiseen jouluun (in short, Aikamatka).
This performance, organised by several Pentecostal churches in Finland, allows children to experience the real Christmas story.
Station to station
However, Aikamatka is different from what we are used to seeing in churches at Christmas time. Children usually sit down and passively watch a performance on the stage. But now, they can travel through the scenes themselves.
Aikamatka is indeed a journey that takes children from station to station, via Herod’s palace, the shepherds’ field and the three wise men, not forgetting, of course, the climax of the story with Joseph, Mary and baby Jesus.
This year, the event was held in several churches across the country, including Mikkeli, Pori, Seinäjoki, Tampere, as well as the capital, Helsinki. Schools in the city and surrounding areas are invited to participate.
The event also has sessions open to the public. In a highly secular society like Finland, Aikamatka is a rare opportunity for many to hear the Biblical narrative.
Unforgettable
“We want to reach children with the real Christmas story,” says Taneli Hieta-Koivisto from Pori. “There are many stories about Santa Claus around us. But we want children to have an unforgettable experience of the first Christmas.”
However, do children really have lasting memories of Aikamatka? “As a youth pastor, I visit high schools or colleges in Pori. Since we have been doing this for over 25 years, I sometimes have the opportunity to ask students if they participated in Aikamatka when they were little. It is not uncommon to see all the hands raised.”
Angel
Noora Suvorova was one of the children who was touched by the event in Pori: “I remember that it was a really exciting event. Since my family was member of the church, I did the journey over and over again when I was a little girl. I even got to the point where I knew all the lines by heart. And then, as a teenager, I played the role of an angel.”
Since then, Noora has left Pori to settle in Mikkeli, where she pioneered a new edition of the project. Together with local church leaders, she started looking for new ways to reach the city’s schools.
“That’s when I came up with the idea of Aikamatka, which we started less than ten years ago. Here, the event is still relatively new, and it is harder to invite the city’s schools because they are not used to it. This year, 200 people took part in the event, including the schools and the general public. And the reactions are always positive”.
Testimonies
In Seinäjoki, the capital of Finland’s Biblebelt, the number of participants was, not surprisingly, higher: “This year we had almost 2,000 people, including 1,100 children from the city’s schools,” says Jere Pitkämäki, the organiser of the event there. “The schools have always responded well. Everyone likes it. We have never had a negative report.”
Aikamatka is often a gateway for many people who would normally never attend church, says Hieta-Koivisto from Pori.
“Over the years, we have seen that many people come back to church more easily after attending Aikamatka, whether for an evangelistic campaign or even for a Sunday service.”
“One child attended Aikamatka several years ago,” Hieta-Koivisto continues. “She was not a Christian and had never been to church. When she was about twenty, she and her boyfriend became Christians. However, they did not know any Christian communities in Pori. That is when she remembered the good time she had had as a child in Aikamatka. The two decided to join our church, where they later got married. Today, they are still members of our community.”
Pioneers
Noora Suvorova also notices that several children who visited the event with their school return with their parents.
Katri Salmela from Helsinki experiences how people are touched by Aikamatka as well. “A woman from our church came with her daughter and grandchildren who never go to church,” she says. “One of her granddaughters was so touched by the beauty of the event that she came out with tears in her eyes.”
History
Aikamatka was first organised at Saalem Pentecostal Church in Helsinki in the 1970s. At that time, Marjukka Antila, a lady from the church had the idea of organising a journey through time after watching an episode of the animated cartoon Superbook. This series takes two children into the past to discover the stories of the Bible.
Since then, the new head of the children’s ministry, Katri Salmela, has taken the baton:
“The children are usually very excited when they finish the journey. And most of the time, we receive very positive feedback from the teachers. For example, this year, a class had to travel for an hour by train, metro and on foot to get to the church. For the teacher, it was the first time he came. In the end, he told us that it had been worth the hassle.”
Sometimes the reactions are not what you would expect, Salmela points out: “One day, one of our community members was on the bus. Near him was a mother sitting with her child, looking out the window. When the bus passed our church, the child shouted: “Mummy, Mummy! Look! This is where Messi [Lionel, the football player] was born!””
A project like this requires a lot of decorations and volunteers. The numbers can range from about 30 people, as in Mikkeli, to 135 people in Helsinki. In addition to human volunteers, Seinäjoki also had animal ‘volunteers’:
“This year, we had a sheep, two chickens and a dog for the nativity scene,” organiser Jere Pitkämäki explains. “In 2019, we even had twelve sheep, a goose, chickens, a donkey, a horse and goats. But it was a bit crazy, I must admit. Since then, we have had to scale back our ambitions.”
Despite the demanding work involved in preparing such an event, each church testifies to the family atmosphere that is created among the volunteers: “It’s nice to do it as a church,” Taneli Hieta-Koivisto from Pori says. “Usually, people don’t spend a lot of time together to get to know each other. This event creates intergenerational unity”.
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