When my family and I moved to Central Asia, we noticed early on that our local friends like to party.

Not the frat house kind of partying, but joyous celebrating. For just about any occasion.

In fact, the religious holidays in our country average out to more than one per week in the calendar year. That’s a lot of celebrating! And they celebrate big. Lights, music, food, dancing — they have it all.

I noticed this aspect of the culture, but I didn’t think much of it until I heard a comment by a student from my host country who had moved to America.

“I would never want to be a Christian,” he said after some time in the U.S. “Christianity is boring — they only celebrate two holidays a year.”

Boring? How can Christianity be boring when we get to know the God of the universe?

I hadn’t given any thought to the fact that celebrating only two religious holidays, Christmas and Easter, might seem strange. But if that’s what this student in the U.S. thinks, is that also what my local friends think?

I want my local friends to see in me the joy of being a Christian. We have a Savior who died in our place and set us free from fear and death! We know for certain that everything will be made new and we will live with Him forever. Of all people on earth, we have the most to celebrate! We should be the party people.

So my family and I started looking at the Christian calendar for other party-worthy occasions. If anything points to Jesus, let’s celebrate it!

We started observing the Old Testament feasts, enjoying good food and recounting how Jesus dwells with us and provides for us.

We eat gummy worms and chocolate pudding on Reformation Day to mark Martin Luther’s confession at the Diet of Worms in 1521 and celebrate our salvation through faith alone in Christ alone.

We celebrate Ascension Day with soda floats. When the kids see the ice cream rise in their cups like Jesus rose into the clouds, we talk about how He’s coming back again to redeem His people.

Ten days after that, we celebrate Pentecost. I read somewhere that people used to throw flower petals from the roof to symbolize the tongues of fire that fell on the believers and filled them with the Holy Spirit. So we take flower petals up to our roof in Central Asia and throw them down, celebrating that the Spirit has come to us and praying the same for our neighbors.

I realized from that student’s comment that if I want my local friends to believe that Jesus offers abundant life, we need to showcase it.

These new family traditions don’t make us more “Christian.” But I pray that, in addition to stirring our own affections for Jesus, they help the gospel make more sense to our neighbors. May they see that following Jesus is worth celebrating. More than that, that He is worth celebrating.

Crossworld worker Jana and her family have been making disciples in Central Asia since 2014.