I just opened my third notebook in this post-hurricane journal.
One week until Christmas.
Christmas in the Caribbean has always been a bit of a disconnect for those of us raised in the north. So many of our Christmas traditions just don't translate here.
Take music for example. "Jingle Bells" is not really a winter song not a Christmas song but this is the only time of the year it get played. How do people who have never seen snow relate to a "one-horse open sleigh?" I get it - I actually rode in a one-horse open sleigh. But not in Puerto Rico.
Or "Winter Wonderland." We've cross-country skied through some amazing winter wonderlands. Here a "winter wonderland" is a tropical rainforest. Or a tropical reef.
One of our favorite Christmas albums is - was - George Winston's December. It is beautiful music for a cold snowy winter night, sipping Butter Nipples (Bailey's and butterscotch schnapps) by a fire. It is unplayable here. It just doesn't make the transition to the tropics where a "cold winter night" gets down to 70 degrees.
Even traditional Christmas carols sound slow and almost dirge-like here where the driving dance rhythm of salsa is king.
So many of our Christmas traditions come from Northern Europe: England, Ireland, northern France, the Netherlands, Germany and Scandinavia. Places where the longer days after the solstice held the promise of spring. Where an evergreen tree in the otherwise bleak and barren landscape was something of a miracle. (Curious that our traditions come from northern Europe and not the Middle East where Jesus was actually born. Then again, maybe it's not all that surprising. So many of our "Christmas" traditions have deep pagan roots.)
Here, where we have the longest Christmas season in the world - Puerto Rico could be called "Christmas Island - it's green all the time. A pine tree, like the Australian pines down the road are an anomaly, an imported species.
If Christmas here is always a disconnect, this year it is even more so. It doesn't feel like Christmas. So many people on the island still don't have electricity - us included. We will likely spend Christmas Eve in the dark, no bright Christmas lights, just candles, flash lights and solar lanterns. Instead of humming Christmas carols, we'll listen to the hum of generators.
We put up Carole and Rolf's Christmas tree today. Carole said she wasn't going to put it up this year but a precocious four-year-old said, "But how will Santa know how to find you? You have to have a tree!"
So we put up the tree. The lights and sparkle made Carole smile. It came close to actually feeling like Christmas.
As I left for the night, Rolf was sitting in their TV room. He pointed at the tree. "It's beautiful, isn't it?" I said. Rolf smiled and he nodded.
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