Monday, December 25, 2023
It’s Christmas! I love this holiday. It’s the best of the year. In fact, the entire holiday season is just the best. When I was young, I was taught that the Christmas season is not actually the time of year that Christ was born, but that it was based on pagan traditions, and that the actual birthday of Christ was April 6th. But then I read this article from BYU Studies which concludes: “While people may always see things differently, the totality of the evidence presented above allows only one conclusion: that his birth occurred within those December weeks that we now commonly refer to as the “Christmas season.”
I love that. I love that Heavenly Father send His son to Earth in the darkest time of the year. It’s not just a metaphor, it’s a reality. It’s the perfect way to complete the perfect holiday triad: Halloween and Día de los Muertos in the fall, when the world is dying, to remind us of our mortality and the need for redemption. Christmas in the dark of winter to remind us that Christ is our hope in the darkness, and Easter in the spring to celebrate Christ’s ultimate victory over death and Hell.
After the great Christmas Eve dinner and party last night, Christmas morning was really low key. We told our kids a long time ago that this Christmas was going to be that way. This entire trip, along with the gear we all needed to get here ... that was our Christmas present. The kids all agreed to it, but they told me that they wanted at least to have a box of Pop Tarts for Christmas. So they all got a box from Santa. River is a little young to understand that, so she got a little doll.
Today I finally had to face my concern about taking the new Sequoia into Mexico. I checked the car insurance website, and they said that they will insure new cars in Mexico, but that they have found that cars with temporary plates tend to be more of a target for theft. So we all had a big council about the situation. Vale and Ozzie both told me that we should be a bit hesitant about taking it down. We thought about taking a bus, but that’s pretty expensive, and then we wouldn’t have any way to move around down there. Someone recommended that we take someone else’s car down there, but I didn’t feel great about that. Ale said she’d just take it down, but when I told her to think about what if she had my face, she said “No, you’ll probably have to pay lots of bribes.” Someone even suggested that we buy a fake license plate in Mexico and put in on there -- but that was too much!
In the end, Valentín shared a scripture from Esther 4:14: “Porque si callas absolutamente en este tiempo, respiro y liberación vendrá de alguna otra parte.” “For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance [...] will arise from another place.” (Esther 4:14). After that, we found that we circled all the way around and ended up on the plan to say a prayer, take the car down, and park it in the safest places we could find. Once the decision was made, we all felt peaceful.
After that, we all loaded into the cars and drove back out to Benson to visit a lady named Hope and her husband Frank. Hope comes from a family of Mexicans who found themselves on this side of the border after the Mexican-American War in the mid-1800s, and Frank is Native American. It was another of these totally random and inexplicably awesome visits. Hope had made an incredible Pozole for us, and we just ate, and visited and she had the kids go outside and decorate her tree in front of her house with ornaments and garlands.
Frank is a great conversationalist, and Hope is so sweet. Their home is warm and cozy and full of Saints and Virgins and images of Jesus. Hope and Betty had a nice visit about faith and the Camino de Santiago. They just connected. Their house overlooks the valley, and as we got ready to leave I asked them to step outside for a photo. Just as we loaded into the cars, the sunset was reaching its climax. It was the perfect way to say goodbye.
After this beautiful day, I thought we were done, but there was one more surprise in store. On the way home, we stopped by a house that had awesome Christmas lights synchronized to a radio station. I know this is not uncommon in Utah, but my kids had never seen anything like it. It was awesome!!