This year, when I think about Christmas day, I won’t remember the food because it really wasn’t any different than the beans and rice I ate the day before. I won’t remember the presents because I didn’t unwrap anything. And I won’t remember celebrating with family because they aren’t here, but I have to admit I missed them a lot! I won’t remember the big celebrations or the glitter and glamour, but the simple, beautiful Christmas morning mass.

I haven’t converted to Catholicism, though I love the catholic churches I have attended in Haiti and have great respect for the work the church supports and carries out. My host family lives in a predominantly Catholic community, and a good percentage of the village, if they are not washing clothes, cooking food, or engaging in other work, attend the services. Mass is a special occasion because it’s rare to have a priest in attendance, but this Christmas, as he usually does, a priest journeyed up the mountain.

The pre-service activities of welcoming the priest and praying the rosary flowed well into the 9 o’clock hour – the supposed start of the mass. You could say it started right on time, Haitian time of course. About 10 o’clock the children from the community school, all dressed in their uniforms, entered from the back door, carrying flowers and singing. Then the drums started, followed by song after song about Nwel, Christmas. There’s something inspiring, almost unexplainable, about music sung to the beat of a hand held drum. When the drum gets going, and the choir sings loud, it’s like the beat of the drum enters your body and rhythmically sways you from side to side. If you aren’t swaying, at least you are tapping your feet.

In between songs, the priest gave a pretty simple sermon, but a few of his comments have stayed with me. He emphasized that Jesus was a poor man, from a poor family, born in a stable with the animals. Haitians can relate to that because they live and work closely with animals. Most families have a few pigs, some chickens, a donkey, and a cow. Part of the daily routine is caring for them – feeding them, changing their grazing area, and making sure they are healthy. No Haitian would think about giving birth in the pigs quarters or on top of hay or grass, which is intended for the cows to eat, but Jesus, a king, was born in a stable. Haitians can visualize the manger scene and can understand what this says about Jesus’ social-economic situation. Even though I’ve glanced at hundreds of nativity scenes, beautiful displayed in remembrance of the stable birth, it’s so hard for me to fathom how poor Jesus’ family was. In fact, I hadn’t really pondered it until recently.