WEST VALLEY CITY — Growing up on the Navajo Reservation in the Four Corners area of Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado, Ervin Slim recalls the sheer joy of Christmas in a way many people only dream of. "When I was growing up, as a little kid, I never knew what Christmas was," admits the Knights of Columbus Grand Knight at Saints Peter and Paul Parish in West Valley City. After the family dinner and the gift giving, Slim and his cousins would "hook up the sleigh to the horses and take off, and enjoy the cold and the snow." Slim is insistent that the basic Christmas celebration is equivalent in its outward forms from the Native American people to anyone else who celebrates it. "After all," he said in an interview with the Intermountain Catholic, "the story came from the west and integrated itself through interaction with the immigrants and in time made its way into the Native American experience with the religion. The only way we know how to celebrate Christmas is like everybody else." A Puebloan from the Santa Fe area told Slim about her memories of Christmas customs. "They go door to door at Christmas, but instead of singing carols, they give apples, oranges, or pies as a kind of celebration. Afterward, they gather wood and start a bonfire, with the dancing and music to go along with it into the night." Slim began learning about Christmas through going to a Christian church near his home and enjoying their pageants and dramatic productions surrounding Christmas. At 13, he saw one of a particular dramatic intensity. "The story began outside, where a chief had put a Christmas tree by itself, had teepees around. People would come out and start dancing around it to celebrate Christmas. "Then this one Native American would come out and destroy everything," said Slim. "In response, the chief would come out and tell the warrior what he had done: in the native tongue, he would say the warrior had destroyed the Christ, and that it was a sin. The decorations, the dancing, the music was all there to celebrate Christ, but he had ruined it. "After that encounter, the warrior would ride off, but just before the end, the Christ would appear to him, as a sign of forgiveness, through the Christmas story," he said.
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