Christmas memories

SUMMARY: The author reflects on their childhood memories of Christmas, where poverty meant not having enough food to eat. Despite this, they remember the joy of exchanging gifts and the warmth of wishing others a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. The author also recalls feeling a deep respect and love for the Child Jesus, although they later turned away from religion. The author believes that a better world is possible with God, and that without him, humanity will struggle to improve. The return of Christmas traditions, such as gift-giving, brings the author joy, but also a sense of compassion for those who do not have the luxury of celebrating. The author ends with gratitude for God's presence in their life and wishes everyone a Merry Christmas.

These pre-Christmas days bring us beautiful memories of childhood. The beauty of those memories surpasses all the bitterness of that humble childhood misfortune, which meant living a new Christmas each time without a good dish to bring to the table or to our childish stomachs. I remember the morning tours of Gustavo Artime's winery (the store) on Christmas days: boxes full of apples, grapes as big as hazelnuts, hazelnuts, whose flavor I never understood, nor why they were only eaten around Christmas time , like walnuts and other goodies.

My mind still remembers "the gifts" from Mr. Gustavo the winemaker when we did him some other favor at that time when sales were doubled: a box of Del Monte raisins to distribute between two, a star, (sweet) hard like a stick, or a bunch of grapes, which was what I liked the most. Even after so many years, tastes, smells and those repeated words wrapped in wonderful wishes of prosperity come to my mind towards those to whom we addressed them with lavish enthusiasm. Merry Christmas! - the children repeated echoing the older ones… and a happy New Year! we ended the sentence with the force of a good omen sentence.