Cuba prepares for Christmas

José Aurelio Paz, HAVANA, Nicaragua, November 26, 2003

Despite the major needs and shortages, Cuba is preparing for Christmas with the typical festival Taxi Heathrow Airport spirit that marks this Island nation and its people.

The last few months of the year are marked by a type of effervescence that, despite the limited income of most families, leads people to look for things to give as gifts or to share with their friends and neighbors.

The first decorated trees have begun to appear early, in the most humble homes. These yuletide offerings are frequently adorned with decorations made from recycled material thanks to the creativity of a people that has learned to “invent” and “struggle” for daily survival.

The major shops are already filled with every imaginable electric and traditional decoration despite the fact that officially establishments do not decorate beyond what is absolutely necessary given that Cuba is a lay society according to its Constitution.

Christmas was recently reinstated as an official holiday in December 2001.

In Many homes, Cubans “on foot,” a popular term for those who do not have cars but use busses and other means of transport, bought piglets mid-way through the year and have been steadily fattening them up to guarantee their Christmas Eve feast.

People also try and paint their homes in order to ensure a clean new year, free of material and personal problems. At midnight on January 1, Cubans toss buckets of water from their rooftops as a traditional expression that better time are coming.

Those who have patios or gardens grow lettuce and yucca, a tuber of African origin that must accompany the roast pork and the congri, a dish that was also inherited from the Black people brought to Cuba as slaves in the XVIII Century. The dish combines white rice with black beans.

Meanwhile, the Church is also preparing, focusing on the more essential meaning of the date. 

Churches are buzzing with choir and pageant practices where different actors are busy assembling their costumes.

For the third consecutive year the Ecumenical Choir “Pax de Deus” is practicing in what will be the main cultural event of the season: a Christmas concert that will take place in the famous Amadeo Roldan theatre in the capital. Cuban Television will transmit the concern in its Bravo! Space.

This year the National Symphonic Orchestra will join the more than 100 voices. Meanwhile, in many provinces in the interior, Churches will have similar events in theatres and multi-purpose halls, when in past eras believers were banned from using public spaces that belong to the government for these festivities.

Christmas in Cuba has always been unifying and does not only bring together Christians but all people of goodwill who exude the spirit of goodness and kindness surrounding the Christ child in the manger.

While some people drive swiftly by people begging in the streets, the simple people, the vast majority, has the heart to share their table, not just what is leftover but what they have managed to gather, demonstrating that it much better to give than to receive.