Christmas Memories
The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light: those who lived in the land of the shadow of death, on them has the light shined. — Isaiah 9:2
She shall bring forth a son. You shall call his name Jesus, for it is he who shall save his people from their sins." — Matthew 1:21
Author
Faustino de Jesús Zamora Vargas
Summary: My Christmas memories of a childhood marked by poverty retain their beauty, even though delicacies and abundant gifts were lacking. Fruit, sweets, and good wishes awakened joy and a mysterious love for the Christ Child. Later, during decades of denial, God and the expressions of Christmas seemed to disappear, replaced by a deceptive materialism. A better world may be possible, but trying to build it without God is a utopia whose human cost is far too high. As Christmas reappears in Cuba, the material celebrations bring joy, but also compassion for the children who never had a Christmas. True Christmas rests in Emmanuel: his love and presence are enough, making his children immensely rich and blessed.
These pre-Christmas days bring us beautiful childhood memories. The beauty of those memories surpasses all the bitterness of that misfortune of a humble childhood, which meant living through each new Christmas without a good dish to put on the table or into our childish stomachs. I remember the morning visits to Gustavo Artime’s grocery store during the Christmas season: boxes brimming with apples, grapes as large as hazelnuts, hazelnuts whose taste I never understood, nor why they were eaten only around Christmastime, like walnuts and other treats.
My mind still recalls “the gifts” from Mr. Gustavo, the grocer, whenever we did him an occasional favor during that season when his sales doubled: a little box of Del Monte raisins to be shared between two, a large star-shaped candy, hard as a stick, or a small bunch of grapes, which was what I liked best. Even after so many years have passed, flavors, scents, and those oft-repeated words come back to mind, wrapped in marvelous wishes of prosperity for those to whom we addressed them with lavish enthusiasm. Merry Christmas! we children would repeat, echoing the adults. And…a prosperous New Year! we would finish the phrase with the force of an auspicious pronouncement.
The poverty of those days, the memories of a table without a tablecloth or sumptuous dinners that accompanied my family year after year, could not and never will extinguish the recollections of those Christmas messages addressed essentially to those who could celebrate it worthily…or unworthily, as the case might be. In those childhood days, with no awareness of religion or of Christmas’s importance to humanity, the mere expression “Baby Jesus” inspired in me respect and a tender, profound, and mysterious love that would be difficult to explain in human words.
Years later, God and the little baby Jesus disappeared from my life, and I saw them no more. Forty years passed, perhaps an even longer time that is no longer worth remembering. But God did not disappear alone. With Him went the apples, the hazelnuts, the grapes, the words, and the good wishes we uttered with sordid joy as soon as December began. Denying God suddenly became a sign of goodwill among men. New effigies and statues began to appear to replace the living God. The word was raised up as an anvil for human hammers, erratic builders of a false, deceptive, and incoherent materiality. The return to contemporary Pharisaism, more covert and marginal than it was 2,000 years ago, became a moralistic doctrine with wretched overtones of holocaust.
A better world may be possible, but without God, it is a utopia. Without Him, every prospect of improving this planet—which, incidentally, was created by Him at the beginning of time—will be conditioned by disasters, circumstances, and scenarios that man himself would produce in order to survive. If human survival is to be the result of any effort to make this world better at some point in history, the price would be too high even to begin working toward the possibility of improving it. How easy it would be to return to God!
God has reappeared in our Cuban lands, and with Him the apples, the walnuts, the grapes, and…Christmas. The gifts wrapped in cellophane and colorful ribbons have returned. On a human level, when I see the gift baskets go by with their crinkling cellophane and elaborate decorations, I feel a childlike joy within me. As a Christian, I feel profound compassion for this world where tens of thousands of children die every day without ever having had even one Christmas.
Christendom celebrates the true and only Christmas with the hope of a better world. And of course it is possible! Emmanuel is here with us. His unconditional love amazes us. His presence in our lives today is enough to celebrate His birth. We, His children, need only Him at Christmas, because He is Christmas. We are immensely rich, fabulously blessed. From the light of that manger which illuminated the darkness 2,000 years ago and which continues to shine upon our lives today, we proclaim: Thank You, Lord, for Your Christmas! Thank You for being here in our Homeland, and because, despite our having denied You for years and continuing to deny You in every possible way, You have never left!
Merry Christmas!