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| Jasmine Lam performs the traditional Cambodian Blessing Dance at the Cambodian Fellowship Christian Reformed Church's annual Easter and Cambodian New Year celebration held Saturday, April 1, 2012, at Evergreen Commons. (Annette Manwell/Sentinel staff) |
Apr 01, 2012
By ANNETTE MANWELL
The Holland Sentinel
“We never forget where we came from”
Holland — Since 1996, the Cambodian Fellowship Christian Reformed Church has been holding an annual combined Easter and Cambodian New Year celebration.
This year, the event took place earlier than usual on Saturday at Evergreen Commons, primarily because of trouble with hall rental, but also as a kick-off to the season.
The Cambodian New Year typically is celebrated April 13, Deacon Chris Lim said.
The church, though small, always is trying to reach out to the Cambodian non-believers of Christianity in the community who follow Buddha, Lim said. For that reason, the annual celebration takes place in a more public forum.
The hall was decorated in green and gold balloons. Many women wore beautiful and colorful gowns with elaborate and intricately decorated bead work.
Dancers wore traditional gowns, also elaborately decorated, but also of specific colors based on the dancer’s placement in the line, said lead dancer Jasmine Lam, who wore a silver dress and gold accessories.
There are five dancers, she said, wearing silver, green, orange, red and purple. After an opening prayer, the girls performed the traditional Blessing Dance before the evening’s first speaker, Cambodian minister Barnabas Mam gave a sermon.
Lam has been dancing for six years, and although she enjoys the traditional Cambodian dance and likes to help her uncle, the Rev. Socheth Na, pastor of the Cambodian Fellowship, with the annual celebration, she really likes all kinds of dancing.
“We’re a small church, but we do big things,” Lim said, of the celebration, adding that the church typically sponsors mission trips of an average 10 people to Cambodia two or three times a year.
On one trip, the group helped to build a home for the elderly and the blind, he said.
“We never forget where we came from,” he said.
2 comments:
The costum has been changed not to look like Khmer original and traditional costum. They tried to change the dance costum. This will effect the Khmer culture, epicially the traditional dance culture.
Many cultures are defined by and derived from religions. For example, western cultures are mainly shaped by Christian belief. Therefore, if one want to adopt Christianity, one should not bother to keep the old culture. By doing so it would undermine the new faith because it implicitly recognizing and accepting the work of the devil. Jesus once said: I am the only way. You could only go to the father through me. Based on this statement, the only true religion in this universe is a Christian faith and the rest of other believes are devil worshippors.
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