Never have I experienced such a powerful Christmas celebration, nor have I ever worked so hard, been so unconcerned for myself, and had such fun. It has truly been a Merry Christmas. We began making merry on December 23 when we saw the gifts from a U.S. group called Mission International.
For a couple of months, the refugees had been weaving wide, shallow baskets, one for each family, in which Salvadorans hold their warm tortillas. But no one knew why we wanted to have the baskets distributed by December.
Oh, the sense of excitement in the air as each mother came to the truck with her basket! The gifts they received were simple and unadorned: five pounds of flour, one pound of margarine, three pounds of sugar, spices, tomatoes, potatoes, eggs, yeast, banana leaves. Their excitement reminded me that some families have had nothing but rice, beans, and tortillas during these long months.
The rural custom is to eat pork tamales and sweetbread at Christmas. Within an hour after the food distribution two days ago, women were firing up the adobe oven. On into the night women took turns baking their sweet cinnamon bread.
At 3:30 a.m. the men began the hard work of butchering hogs for the tamales. I had so looked forward to witnessing the butchering, but I had stayed up late the night before, so on hearing the first squeal I awoke for less than a few seconds before falling back asleep until dawn. They were more than half done by the time I awakened.
The refugees did all the butchering themselves and decided how to distribute the meat. I enjoyed listening to their decision-making process in the cool dawn hours. The honesty and integrity of these folks never fail to impress me. With the squeal of hogs resounding through the river valley, our Christmas Eve began.
Before the breakfast beans and tortillas were ready, the men were distributing meat tent by tent. It is important to cook the meat as soon as possible in this hot climate. While the women made tamales wrapped in banana leaves, we kept the children busy putting the final touches on their nativity scenes, one for each of the three sections of the camp.
The nativity scenes were part of the Christmas club project one woman initiated for the children. Using clay from the riverbed, the children made figurines to illustrate the nativity: Mary, Joseph, baby Jesus, sheep, shepherds, and cows. Their imaginations put Jesus into an environment similar to theirs; so along with the traditional animals appeared pigs and an armadillo, and baby Jesus was sleeping not in a manger but in a hammock.
They painted corn and beans in bright colors, strung them into garlands, and used them as adornment for a dead tree branch painted green. They hung other imaginative things on their tree—tiny, empty medicine boxes, and figures shaped from the tinfoil from the margarine sticks. I even saw brightly colored discarded margarine boxes used as decorations.
The other major project of the clubs was to prepare a traditional Christmas drama. It was a modern adaptation of a 13th-century epic poem with long orations and songs detailing the events surrounding the Christmas story. The production was directed by an old but energetic woman who teaches most of the catechism class and can recite the long rosaries from memory. Under her direction, the children memorized their lines and made imaginative, colorful costumes for each role.
At dusk the troubadours began their program, walking between the rows of tents and stopping every so often. One section of the program told the event from the shepherds' perspective, another gave the impressions of the townspeople of Bethlehem, while yet another related the musings of the three kings as they journeyed to the birthplace of the babe. A fascinating conversation took place between Mary and Joseph, as they marveled at all these visitors to their stable door. In a touching solo, Mary spoke of giving birth to her first son, far from home and in a strange place.
Two other parts of the program were particularly imaginative. One was the animals' narrative of their experience on that glorious night. The burro told how he had offered his gift to the Christ child in the early dawn hours: as Mary searched for some cloth in which to wrap the baby, he breathed his warm breath on baby Jesus to keep his tiny body warm. The other part was the journey of the wise men as they traveled the many miles, sleeping by day and following the star by night. Each time they stopped at homes along the way, they were offered food provisions: tamales, sweetbread, and coffee.
Everyone stayed up late on Christmas eve, relaxing and visiting. At midnight the lay catechists led us in worship. Their simple, moving Christmas reflection was not that Christ is with us, as I had expected, but rather that we are with Christ, accompanying him in his first days of life: born in a strange town and forced to flee and take refuge in a foreign land at only three days of age. Our worship that night was a sincere identification with Mary, Joseph, and the new baby.
Yvonne Dilling was national coordinator of the Witness for Peace in Nicaragua and had worked for two years with Salvadoran refugees in camps in Honduras when this article appeared. The above article is excerpted by permission from the book, In Search of Refuge, by Yvonne Dilling with Ingrid Rogers, copyright 1984 by Herald Press, Scottdale, PA.
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