This Christmas, all across the country, people are trying to figure out how to have a merry one even though their families are split by divorce or they are suffering some other loss.
My children were about seven and ten when their father and I divorced and after a year of difficulty and bitterness, we made our peace and carefully planned ways to minimize the effect on the children. I think we did a pretty good job but there is no getting around the grief and emptiness.
These plans meant that we, like many other families, traded off holidays. This value of fairness persists in our family even to this day when my children are in their 30s and in-laws complicate the plans. I was so happy to have both children, a son-in-law, my Dad and a niece and her husband with me this Thanksgiving–a rare treat.
My heart goes out, with supreme understanding, to all who struggle with loss at the holidays. I remember with vivid clarity the time I spent Christmas totally alone.
I was living in New Mexico on San Juan Pueblo land in a little 100-year-old adobe house with a tiny propane heater supplementing the wood heat. That year the grown-up kids were at their Dad’s and for some reason, saving money perhaps, I decided not to go to my own parents. All my close friends in Santa Fe had gone to visit their parents, or were having their own traditional family celebrations. I know all I would have had to do was mention that I was going to be alone and I would have had invitations, but I was too proud.
Farolitos and Christmas lights, San Juan Pueblo
Pueblo people in New Mexico have lived in the same place for centuries. They never suffered the dislocation forced on most other tribes, although they certainly did suffer repression of their religion and customs. Pueblo children were sent to government schools where their hair was cut and they were punished for speaking their Tewa language. The tribes incorporated many Catholic traditions, finding a way to weave them into the structure of their own beliefs, a lesson we could all learn given these times of religious fanaticism.
It was in this setting that I found myself alone on that Christmas nearly a decade ago. My closest neighbors, part of a large Pueblo family, were at the husband’s parents for Christmas on the other side of the pueblo. All was quiet in our little neighborhood.
I bought a tree for myself and figured out how to turn on some ancient Christmas lights that had never been taken down still hanging on the eaves. On Christmas Eve I made my own farolitos, little lights made by placing a votive candle in sand in the bottom of a paper bag.
And then I walked up to the pueblo plaza where the tribe was dancing. The Matachina dance is only on Christmas Eve, and not every year. The men dance accompanied, oddly enough, by fiddlers as well as traditional drummers. The dancers are fierce looking with a sweep of dark fringe covering their faces. The dance is rapid and intense– no smarmy silent night here–the mood is deeply, almost angrily, emotional.
My breath was taken away–some powerful force was at work here, some blending of native and European, some calling of spirits, some celebration of vigorous life. Whatever it was went straight into my unconscious, completely bypassing reason, as if in a dream. I was stunned.
It was snowing lightly as I walked back home and most of my farolitos were still burning. They are to be left burning all night “to light the Christ Child’s way.”
In the morning snow covered the ground and the farolitos were all burned out. I lit a fire, made coffee and opened packages alone. I cried, missing my children. I remember my mother sent me a lovely angel statue, which made me cry more.
Then I bundled up and took off walking with my dog, Freddie. Uno, Snowflake and Cricket, the neighbor’s motley crew of dogs, joined us as we walked over snow covered pepper and squash fields, irrigated in the summer, down to the banks of the Rio Grande. The beach, covered with smooth peebles, was now also covered in snow. The river flowed strong and silent—the dogs waded out a ways for a drink. I thought I was pretty lucky, all in all.
Snow at the pueblo backyard looking towards the fields, Christmas morning
Dec. 8, 2001