There are a million reasons I can think of for hating Christmas: the killing, selling and tossing of beautiful, fragrant trees; buying presents with money you probably don't have; writing Christmas cards with no inspiration; withstanding grown ass people wearing santa hats; being reprimanded for not closing your eyes during grace at dinner.
I am pretty sure if I try and look closely into this Christmas tradition, I could find a dozen more reasons to justify its unnatural, fabricated nature. Nonetheless, at my 27 years, Christmas is one of the few events that still beautifully renews the love I feel for my family, and somewhat reminds me of forgotten little things I used to love about living in Dominican Republic. Although I am fully conscious of its religious origins and its consumerist societal byproducts, La Navidad takes me back to a childhood place in la isla where, unaware of family conflicts and related neuroses, being around my family was a pleasure in its purest stage; enjoying the smell of puerco asado and stealing a cuerito or two before it was served at dinner, shaking my gifts under the christmas tree to get a clue of what they were, listening to Navidad que vuelve over Ponche Crema de Oro, getting a handful of bucapiés from my brothers and smashing them against the sidewalks in my neighborhood....putting a cohete in a Coca Cola bottle and watching it blow up in the sky in a million different colors.
Now, as I share homemade ponche with my family in New York, as I sing Alegre vengo de la montaña feeling the cold air seep through the windows, as my son aks: mamá llegó santa? and wakes up in a joyful jump to open his presents, as I eat Dominican food leftovers with the girls, smiling and our eyes still stained with last night's makeup, I realize how benevolent Christmas is, and wish that maybe, If I close my eyes for a second, I could still see the color of the cohetes from la isla blowing up incessantly in the New York sky.
