Dear readers of our blog,
In these times, in our family we always remember a letter that Alfredo gave us ten years ago. Although we have read it many times, it still touches our soul. That is why we want to share it with you today.
Alfredo sent this letter also to his friends. However, it is still a personal letter. Surely, from where he is now, Alfredo allows us to share his thoughts and words with you. But we are equally sure that he would like you to mention his authorship if, at some point, you are going to use this text. It would be only fair.
Best wishes and hugs for the new year.
Rita Mocker and family.
Quindewach'anan, Cajamarca, December 24th
Very dear ones:
Once again for Christmas, the trees in the Plaza de Armas in Cajamarca have been lined with metallic paper, in blue, red, silver and gold colours (each sheet is not cheap and they have used a lot). Others have been covered with imitation snow on their foliage, and have been hung with little bells, flashing lights, boxes of panettone and presents lined with paper filled with teddy bears and sleighs, little angels and little houses with chimneys in the middle of a European winter.
I just walked by and imagined myself dressed as a bullfighter in Hawaii: these little trees are going to sweat it out for at least a month thanks to the decorative inspirations of the local authorities.
I had to ask myself - once again - if there is another holiday like Christmas that has become so spiritually drained and so ridiculous.
Let me explain: this is a festival commemorating a birth. The word comes from the medieval Latin nativitatem, which is an accusative of nativitas, ‘birth’. So it is not a question of piñata because it is not celebrating a birthday but the fact of being born.
What is Christmas apart from a long holiday? This unhealthy bombardment of saviour carols and shopping therapy of collective brutalisation rekindles in me every year-end the indigestion of a farce that gets worse and worse.
I know the wonder and risk of childbirth.
In addition to the cases that I have witnessed and assisted in rural communities, I attended the birth of my son Rumi at home with an old midwife who knew her job very well. A few years later we were together again to attend Mara's birth, although the elder had already forgotten her scissors and wanted to engage in great controversies with me about safety in modern times, while Rita could no longer bear the pains of childbirth.
While Rumi did somersaults to stay in the extraordinary world of the womb, Mara was born with two turns of the umbilical cord around her neck: we come into the world covered in blood and suffocation, exposed to the light and the challenge of orientating ourselves or dying.
I can't help but wonder what Maria's birth must have been like.
The sister must have been a little girl (nothing like the immovable woman painted on the holy cards). There wouldn't have been the obedient donkey behind the stable gate, nor the contemplative cow, nor the meek little sheep keeping pious silence. That place must have been full of carcasses and sandy piss.
The sweaty, unbathed fathers, tense from persecution and hunger, would they have had a passable rag to clean the bloody fats from the birth, would someone have brought them some hot water, would Joseph have had a candle to light himself and would someone have helped him to keep the flies away?
As I also do carpentry work, I know what it's like to blister your hands with the saw and to cut your nails with the hammer. I know what it's like to peel your skin with the chisel and to slice yourself gracefully with the rasp. So José, engaged in a slightly different profession to that of a registered nurse, probably without an apron and without the minimum aseptic conditions that are recommended (especially if the child to be born is the son of God), must have outdone himself with his calloused and glued hands to cut the umbilical cord and give courage to the woman in labour.
Would there have been someone - in the midst of that squalor - to prepare a little broth for the newborn to replenish some of their strength, would her breasts have had milk, would there have been enough room with unrubbed straw, a blanket to wrap the baby in, would he have been cold?
The Father of this companion is brave enough to put him to the test like this, from the beginning, with so much care. And quite fresh, moreover, to charge the bill to the intermediary father.
Jesus was able to live after he was born, probably because of that incredible capacity of the poor to adapt to the threats of death. Because, given the conditions, it doesn't seem to me that God would have been too careful not to attack him with tetanus or fulminant bronchopneumonia.
I'm probably going to be a spoilsport, but this Christmas thing we're celebrating is nothing like the birth of the Carpenter's Son. That silly image of a pink baby on clean straw in a dazzling little box is uncookable; that trite representation of Mary overdressed and immaculate is unfair; and that bland portrayal of Don Pepe (the Josephs are called Pepe for Pater Putativus, PP for short, ‘considered or held as father’), as a useless old man, incapable of doing anything with his wife, is opprobrious.
Nor is the appearance of the three wise men as they are presented to us swallowable (hopefully, being wise, they had the sense to bring something edible besides gold, frankincense and myrrh). And, if they arrived at the famous manger late at night, the shepherds must have been pretty grimy and tired after having herded piles of other people's goats in the middle of sandy fields without the comfort of water.
Thus, the Christmas films in which all the Jews of that time are dressed in spotlessly clean robes are not to be thankful for. The snow-filled cards for the arid deserts of Palestine are pure mockery. What do the fluffy chocolate bars and the mutilated pine trees covered with garlands, red balls, stars and frost have to do with the child born in the midst of misery and destined to give himself to his people?
Shall we toast to the Master whose old man was immutable and did not take away from him the terrible drink that was coming his way (‘Father, if it were possible, take this cup away from me’) or shall we toast to the fat jojorojo (RedHoHo) dressed in the colours of Coca-Cola? Will it be good to remember human misery amidst the lights going on and off (with Iraqi oil, Bush family investments, etc.), sharpening our ears amidst the (unbearable) electronic Silent Nights, the unholy toys, the binge offers, the Merry Christmas, the reindeer and the ‘The Saviour is born!’ sermons?
Will we remember you, brother?
Tonight I'll eat turkey and drink champagne. We'll say to the Son of Man: Come on home, brother, we love you here.
Let's drink a toast to the good fight together.
Perhaps your mother told you how you were able to turn natural death around from the beginning; how you could not escape from the bastards who murdered you, from the traitors who sold you out, from the empire that took your hand, from the hierarchs who insulted you, and from the friends who denied you when the chips were down.
And we will also talk about those who loved you. You were always a party-goer after all (it was great to turn 600 litres of water into 600 litres of wine!)
While we toast, thousands of other hungry and rebellious people will have been born, without any advent promise but with enough guarantees of crucifixion.
We may not be able to change the world, but we will not allow the system to turn us into its rams either.
A hug,
Alfredo Mires Ortiz.
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