The thought occurred to me that not having the opportunity to see Christmas in another culture could be the case for many people. So a description of what happened on one day of my life here in the Dominican Republic could be appreciated by some. This year was the first Christmas that my wife and I have spent without having some of our family around us, and it felt a bit hollow in some ways. We found ourselves thinking back to Christmases past. So maybe taking the time to write this will also encourage me.
My wife and I decided to consolidate our time and money to buy one gift for both of us this year instead of buying one for each other. However, as I looked under the tree Saturday morning I noticed a couple of small gifts from her, and so I wanted to find something special also. She had some music planning to do for the Christmas service the next morning and couldn’t come with me, so I was secretly glad that I could make this a surprise.
Giving a shallow excuse to leave, and making sure I had my sheathed knife tucked handily in my front pocket, I began my thirty-minute walk to the nearest mall. The sky was deep blue and dotted with cotton clouds. The temperature was a balmy 86 degrees. Even though I’ve spent four “winters” here I still had to reassure myself that it really was Christmas Eve.
Music and conversation drifted from the open louvered windows of many of the houses and apartments that I passed. This is a party culture and it seems to me that Christmas seems to be the height of the party season. Some have told me that I shouldn’t expect much to get done in the area of services during the month of December. Many empty beer and liquor bottles were stacked unceremoniously next to the blue plastic garbage barrels on the sidewalk in front of the houses ready for self-appointed recyclers to take somewhere to exchange for a few pesos. The garbage seemed stacked a little higher which indicated that the garbage trucks haven’t been running much lately.
Parties here are usually loud and raucous. As I walked I could hear the booming beat of their beloved merengue music in the distance. It reminded me of my neighbors which have been playing their TV and music so loud for the last couple of weeks that we can’t stay on that side of the apartment if we want to have a conversation. So we close the spare bedroom doors and huddle in our own bedroom for the evening.
It also reminded me that at 5:30 on this very morning we were awakened by another unexpected event. We are a half block from a well used and noisy street called La Argentina. Looking from our bedroom window in our bed clothes through sleepy eyes we watched for ten minutes as a convoy of cars, trucks, motorcycles, and four-wheelers paraded slowly by. On the back of the flatbed trucks were speakers the size of horses! We could feel the music in our chests. As they moved along the wave of sound set off car alarms for a block on either side of the street. Lights were flashing, horns were honking, motorcycle engines were being revved, people were hanging out of car windows and sitting on hoods and packed in the back of pickups with every car playing different music, and drunken voices were yelling, “Feliz Navidad!!!” One could barely imagine a louder, more unorganized, reckless social gathering. All I could think of was a scene from an old Star Trek episode which depicted a society ran by a computer which allowed sinful debauchery on scheduled holidays called “The Red Hour”.
This “Red Hour” parade in the DR, I found out later, is a custom called the “mananita”. During Christmas, people begin their parties at 10 or 11 at night. When they finally finish in the wee hours of the morning they would sometimes sing for the neighbors. We recognize this most likely as similar to our custom of caroling. Well, today this custom has “de-volved” into a drunken early morning parade of loud music and cars designed to wake up as many people as possible. But living here, a person has to accept that this is a loud culture … especially at Christmas.
As I continued to walk, my thoughts were interrupted by the sight of an unkempt, gaunt, white-haired man staggering up the sidewalk toward me. I instinctively crossed to the other side of the street and placed my hand in my knife pocket. The man obliviously shuffled by clutching a green quart- sized beer bottle in his left hand as he sang some undecipherable song loudly off key.
Nearing the mall I passed the Tesoro Supermercado, a relatively new and nice smaller grocery store. On the top of the flat roof was a twelve-foot-tall inflatable Santa Claus which had obviously developed a slow leak over night. Poor Santa was face down with his hat and both arms hanging over the side of the two-story building. I couldn’t help but glance at his left hand to see if he had a green bottle in it. He didn’t.
Nativity scenes abound everywhere … on people’s roofs, on their balconies, in front yards, in the foyer of our apartment building when you walk in. When I finally reached the Plaza Internacional Mall my heart was warmed again as I admired the gigantic nativity “village” that was set up at the top of the escalators. It has the Bethlehem stable as the dominant feature, of course, but in the surrounding country side were sheep, streams, meadows, village people, moving windmills …. I fully expected to see a model train come chugging around from behind the mountains in the back. I appreciate this religious emphasis on the holiday.
Within a half hour I found an adequate gift and sat down in the food court to have a Whopper from Burger King before I headed home. The mall was crowded with well-dressed shoppers only a little more noisy and busy as normal, and I realized after a few moments that I was lonely. I missed my family and I missed my wife. So I gulped down the last few bites and retraced my route to return home.
In this country as you walk you see many people standing or sitting looking like they are doing nothing. To the average American pedestrian it appears to be vagrancy. But in this country, because of the weather or perhaps other reasons I don’t understand, people spend much of the time outside. I saw domino tables on the sidewalk or in the driveway with shouting men slapping dominoes on the table.
I’ve seen men squatting on curbs, sitting on waist-high walls, leaning back in plastic chairs on the sidewalk … people everywhere not in motion.
And they have no foibles about staring at a Gringo out of curiosity as he passes. I must admit, it still makes me uncomfortable to have a group of men who are loudly conversing as they sit in chairs on the sidewalk suddenly clam up as they see you approaching, look at you as you pass, and then resume talking when you’ve gone by.
Consequently I took three Chick tracts with me and asked the Lord to help me know where to place them. Since some people sit around, they might as well have something to read, right? I placed one on a half-broken plastic chair where taxi drivers sit and wait for their next fare. Another I put on a bench where people wait for the next gua-gua or concho car to come by with the right route number on it. The last one I placed on a wall near where I knew some “watchies” (private security guards) would be sitting.
We have three favorite tracts we use. One is about a baseball player … baseball is huge here since this city has a professional team called Aguilas Cibaenas (Cibao’s Eagles) … a winter baseball team that also gives several professional American players a place to keep in shape during the off season.
The other tract is about a girl who gets caught up in the party scene … and, as I have mentioned, partying is huge here. Our third popular tract shares the gospel with no words. We run into a number of people who cannot read well if at all. In fact, this is the burden for some missions here. Public schools require a certificate of birth and a uniform to attend. Because of rampant immorality and illegitimacy and poverty, many children, especially in the barrios (the poor parts of the city), are unable to go to school. So Carol and I are trying to get in the habit of leaving a tract or two somewhere when we go for a walk.
When I arrived home I placed my small gift under the artificial five-foot tree which stands on a couple of packing boxes covered with a sheet in front of our living room window. As you can imagine, on this small island that is only about ¼ the land area of the state of Idaho, a person doesn’t have the option of going into the woods to find his own Christmas tree, and the imported “real” trees are rare and cost-prohibitive. The tree decoration appears to be much more ornate here than what I am used to … lots of wide ribbons and bows and large bulb ornaments the size of soft balls rather than individual ornaments … the tree seems to be more for show than for sentiment.
It is also an interesting difference to note that virtually every store offers free gift wrapping. The need to buy your own wrapping paper and wrap your own gift is basically nonexistent.
Our loud TV-watching neighbors fortunately were gone for the evening so my wife and I took a picture of ourselves in front of our small tree to commemorate our “lonely Christmas”, then we popped “Holiday Inn” into the DVD player and pretended to be in snowy Idaho on a Christmas past.
While I was gone to the mall, my wife talked a good while with my daughter in Peru and we also Skyped with my son’s family in Japan who had already celebrated Christmas. We are very thankful that even though we are not with them physically we have a chance to have them in our home virtually for a few minutes. We are a generation most blessed in that regard, I suppose.
In our city of Santiago there is a monument dedicated to war heroes. In shape it is a DR version of the Washington monument … tall, on a hill, and centrally located. At the foot of that monument the city traditionally puts on a thirty-minute nonstop fireworks display at midnight on New Year’s Eve that is indeed a credit to this country’s reputation for celebration. In anticipation of this many people buy fireworks ahead of time. Just think of it as what happens in the US around the Fourth of July. Consequently, for the month of December, and especially on Christmas Eve, one can expect to see and hear random fireworks going off from many places in the city.
From our flat roof on top of our two-story apartment building we have a 270 degree unobstructed view of the sky from which we could have seen some fireworks. So what did we do instead? We turned on the ceiling fan in our bedroom and went to bed at 10:30. Were we trying to be fresh for the Sunday church service the next morning, or were we pouting because we missed a traditional Christmas with our family? Hmmmm, maybe a little of both, but that’s how we ended our Christmas Eve in the DR.
For this purpose the son of God was manifested,
that he might destroy the works of the devil.
I John 3:8 KJV
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