Memories of Christmas in Paraguay

By Mika Susana Akikuni

(Felíz Navidad a Nino Palacios, mi compatriota en Laredo)

"Todo está tranquilo" (Everything's calm). Even in the dog days of summer, if you happen to ask a Paraguayan how his or her day is going, this is the typical reply you will get from them, often with a dreamy expression flowing from their eyes.
In Paraguay, a tiny country located northeast of Argentina and south of Brazil and Bolivia, time is almost still and it is an unspoken taboo for one to say that anyone is in a hurry to get somewhere. There, every moment is enjoyed for what it is, accompanied by a conversation with a neighbor and a sip of an ice-cold herbal tea called tereré.
Thus, Christmas is no exception.
In my home country, Navidad or the season of the Papa Noel, Santa Claus, falls in summer.
As a child and adolescent growing up in a city called Encarnación, I cannot remember my family ever rushing to plan a Christmas gathering or planning at all. Rather, things always happened spontaneously, with a relative or family friend giving us a phone call at sundown of Christmas Eve inviting us for a barbecue known as asado, or my family of Japanese immigrants making traditional Japanese food to share it with locals who had never tried a foreign cuisine. My favorite memory of Christmas season was when one afternoon, a neighbor suddenly stuck her hand into a hole of the brick fence dividing our houses to pass me a piece of a traditional holiday fare called sopa paraguaya, a warm cornbread baked with sautéed onion and cheese.
Amidst poverty, life is lived very simply in Paraguay, and individual gift exchanges are not expected. Not at all. Instead, I remember everyone around me relishing the joy of decorating their homes with multi-colored wreaths, hand-delivering Christmas cards, cooking meals for hours to give a surprise party for someone else, or attending church at midnight on Christmas Eve for La Misa Del Gallo, the Mass of the Rooster.
In fact, during all my life, I can recall only one instance in which my parents gave me a Christmas gift. When I was seven, after a full day of playing with firecrackers, my parents instructed me to sleep early on the 24th of December to make sure that I'd receive a present from Papa Noel. Not able to contain my intrigue, I got up early the next morning and rushed to the living room to see if I would find something. Luckily, I did not have to look for long because there, to my excitement, lay on the sofa a small gift, wrapped in colorful paper. Slowly and carefully, I opened my present and I found inside a delicate, rhinestone-covered brooch in the shape of a dragonfly! It was beautiful. After that, somehow, Papa Noel never came down our chimney again, but I will be forever thankful to my parents for that moment of delight and spirit of gratefulness they sparked in me.
This year, I will be traveling from Laredo to Paraguay to spend Christmas with my relatives. Even though I have not been there in the past two years, I know that not much has changed. The same people will be there to greet me and the familiar laughter of children will fill the atmosphere with peace.
And just as when I was a child, when night falls and the diamond-studded sky reveals the Milky Way in its fullest splendor, I will be delighted to stroll down to the only plaza or park in my city to admire a giant, multi-colored Christmas tree lit every year only to adorn the most important display of all times: the pesebre, the nativity scene.

(Mika Susana Akikuni is associate director of Public Affairs and Information Services at Texas A&M International University.)