Christmas was not celebrated at home. To be more precise: there was very little, hardly any celebration: There wasn’t much of a gift-giving ceremony or stories about Santa Claus and the Three Wise Men; Some seasons I remember there wasn’t even a tree.
It was neither a question of principle nor of ideological or religious attitude: in fact, my parents always considered themselves Catholic. Nor was it disinterest or apathy; It was something else, and over time I developed a theory (which, like all theories we use to try to explain something about others – especially our parents – has a serious chance of being completely wrong).
My main thesis concerns foreigners. My parents emigrated from Spain between the late 1950s and early 1960s. Just as the flow of migrants was declining and his country was recovering economically; It was never clear why they came, but it was the reason they stayed: life and the way it sometimes destroys people.
I tell myself that it is not bad that there is a date when, with humility or pomp, in crowds or with the core of the most intimate affection, we set a table as beautiful as possible, we share food and drinks and, whether there are children or not, we have the gesture of the small gift
The truth is that although they settled permanently in these countries, none of them adapted to, loved or recognized themselves in anything that Argentina offered them. His personal paradise had been across the ocean; As if chiseling a delicate glass ball, they cultivated their own territory, a small and imaginary Spanish world in which they found peace, certainty and refuge. On this island, I imagineThey spent their Christmas days, days in the snow and their childhood idealized and encapsulated, along with who knows how many other things that the rest of us didn’t have access to or didn’t know.
Not that it was too problematic for me. Like all boys, he accepted what came. I knew there was a Christmas in the movies, another in my friends’ houses, another in shop windows, in children’s magazines, in stories. And some unique and somewhat sparse parties at my home.
The first Christmas tree I put together as an adult was in December when I was eight months pregnant. I did it for the coming baby. And I did it for myself. Because although it was impossible for me to define what zone of religiosity I was in, there was something about the celebrations of those days that I didn’t want to miss. I didn’t even want my son to miss it. In the following years I hung garlands on the balcony, with the awkwardness of newbies I talked to him about Santa Claus, we hung water for the kings’ camels (sometimes on the night of the 5th, other times on the night of the 6th…he was a boy and didn’t recognize my mistakes). I never knew how convincing I was, but I made the effort. And the day he came home from school and told him that a certain Marianita had revealed who was behind everything, including the mouse Pérez, I told him not to worry, the gifts would keep coming. And he stayed calmer.
As I write, the lights on the tree at home are twinkling. I tell myself that it is not bad that there is a date when, with humility or pomp, in crowds or with the core of the most intimate affection, we set a table as beautiful as possible, we share food and drinks and, whether there are children or not, we have the gesture of the small gift.
Everyone finds what they like about the holidays. To me it’s wild syncretism. This fact that a good-natured man in a red suit and Nordic flair coexists with some oriental kings and some plastic fir trees with pagan memories of a birth that for some is that of the child god and for others the symbol of what births always bring: the promise of redemption, the possibility of a new beginning, the reminder that we are part of something that comes from far away and will continue, between pain, anger and wounds, but also with the gift of tenderness
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