I have now celebrated my "first Christmas away from home." Home is quite relative, as Honduras is now the fifth country where I have celebrated Christmas. Home for Christmas has always been wherever my immediate family has been, wherever that has happened to be. So although I call La Campa home these days, it's not quite "home for Christmas". Yes, we are "in the bleak midwinter," but not "walking in a winter wonderland." A Honduran midwinter still involves enough sunny days where I can sit outside in a t-shirt and enjoy a guava or two. And it is pointless to be "dreaming of a white Christmas" given that the temperature has not dropped below 10.5C (although a respected man in the community told me a few weeks ago that the drizzle was not water, but ice; the air temperature was a steady, but chilly, 15C!).
Thanks to the waning moon and the dry season, the "midnight clear" allows for plenty of "wondrous stars" to "lend thy light." Orion, Cassiopeia, and the Milky Way shine clear and bright, not obscured by any light pollution. And when the power goes out, the light they lend is both beautiful and necessary.
Firecrackers and noisemakers are popular, so on Christmas Eve their noise echoed off the surrounding cliffs and mountains: "Go tell it on the mountain!!!"
Every night for the eight nights before Christmas, Mary and Joseph and members of the community have gone to different houses, and singing, ask to be let in. Through song, the residents decline at first, but then relent, and "welcome the traveler home." Then with about 40 people present, there is an hour long service based on the rosary. I can now say the Hail Mary in Spanish, can almost say the Lord's Prayer, but am still working on the Creed. I only went two nights, plus Christmas Eve, but Doña Tona helped lead, and so went every night.
On Christmas Eve, every family makes tamales. What a commotion of preparation! Huge quantities of corn was boiled and ground, banana leaves wrapped, delivered, and steamed. The chickens killed (I missed the death of Doña Tona's chicken, but saw its dismemberment. Which chicken was it? The one that let all 10 of her chicks die within 2 days of hatching? The one that pooped on my clean towel as it was drying on the line? Not Maurice Aureliano, as he still wakes me up every morning with his vigorous crowing.)
In between firecrackers, Christmas Eve was calm, but not bright. Apparently, too many people put up Christmas lights at this time of year, needing more electricity than is available. So all week, La Campa had rolling blackouts for about 45 minutes sometime between 6 and 7 pm to allow the city dwellers to enjoy their colourful lights. On Christmas Eve, the power was out for over 2 hours, so the final rosary service was a true candlelight service, which was beautiful. Mass was held at 8:30, and went until 11. I made it until 10:30, at which point I went to bed.
Christmas Eve is the important day here, not Christmas Day. Besides having tamales for breakfast, and going to mass again in the morning, I would not have realized it was Christmas. Tamales for breakfast, by the way, feels a bit weird.
All in all, Christmas was very tranquila. A very relaxing time, not at all like the hustle and bustle that seems to be inherent in a North American Christmas. No gifts were exchanged, families made tamales together, church was the central focus. Different, but good.
Joy to the world, the Lord is come!
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