La Navidad, part 1

So, this will be the first of two reflections over Christmas; this is not my Franklin´s Choice of the month; next week´s entry will deal more explicity with the themes he´s asked us to consider. This week, I´ve been thinking a lot of about what it means to have Christmas in the summer.

It´s strange to think, simultaneously, that it is both Christmastime and beach season here in Uruguay. Admittedly, today with rain and temperatures back below 20 C, it doesn´t feel much like beach season, but nonetheless, this is probably the last good, strong cool spell before summer begins in earnest. The amazing thing is that, despite the season, Santa still wears a heavy fur suit, snowflakes are still used for decorations in some places, and the evergreen imagery so much a part of my theology of Christmas (new life in the middle of the dead winter) is still present, even though every other tree, plant, and flower here is blooming as well.

Walking somewhere this week with Wilma (I forget where exactly), I pointed out how many people there are on the streets these days selling jasmine blossoms. She smiled and told me that, in her opinion, the jasmine is the REAL Christmas tree of Uruguay - it blooms in late November and through December, and the city is filled with the scent of fresh-cut jasmine blossoms. The jacarandas, in my opinion, get the silver medal for Uruguayan Christmas Tree; its hard to walk far in Montevideo without seeing at least one or two jacarandas in full purple glory.

It´s also beach time; last night, La Rambla was filled with people drinking mate, playing drums, hanging out in Parque Rodó, and in general enjoying the not-quite-warm-but-not-yet-cool evening temps. The sound of murgas, not carolers, are in the air - singing, drumming, dancing, and joking around with bitingly sharp lyrics. Candombes, groups of African-style drummers and dancers, aren´t hard to find, either, and even the parodistas - street comedy groups, often vulgar but always funny, are starting to crop up.

In some ways, I miss the "in the bleak mid-winter" Christmas I´ve always known, Christmas marked by the joyful, but cold and broken, celebration of the Savior´s arrival in our world. The flipside is that, when you do Christmas in the summer, the brilliant light of the Daystar really DOES inspire a lot of joy and hopefulness. Here´s to new takes on old holidays.