A Mini Latinx Anthology of the Pandemic Holiday Season
Throughout the year, we have developed Intervenxions into an inclusive platform for writings on the Latinx experience. The pandemic holiday season is no different and offers us another opportunity to expand upon this work. Earlier this month, for example, we published a piece by Janel Martinez which explores her experience celebrating the holidays with her Garifuna family in the Bronx. The themes are at once personal and familiar in a way that captures the uniqueness of Latinx identity when it is not couched in erasure and hegemonic narratives. So today, we share an anthology of sorts which features experiences outside your typical Latinx holiday nostalgia. Apologies, there will be no mention of standard bearers like coquito. No waxing poetic about nochebuena or eating grapes as we say goodbye to 2020. To be clear—nothing against any of those traditions. Instead, we want you to know what the pandemic holiday means for Latinx communities through this modest offering of diverse perspectives.
Y ya, enjoy and have a safe holiday season. Nos vemos en el 2021.
-Néstor David Pastor, managing editor
“Kaipimikanchik (Aqui estamos)”
By Nazkita Serrano
For decades, Kichwa communities who migrated to the United States from various parts of Ecuador have innovated and spearheaded different forms of artistic expression around the nation. Since the 1980’s, ‘Mindalaes’ formed by artists, merchants, musicians, dancers, etc. have founded systems of trade and market across territories as a way of economic survival, resulting in powerful footprints that have changed and raised the presence of Kichwa communities all over the world. However, if you were to ask any ‘Mindalae’ about these processes, especially during this pandemic, I wonder if we’d recognize this work as powerful at all. Maybe, at the cost of shaking up all the feels, I say I will always hold a bitter place for the powers who forced us out, and forced us into this way of survival.
There is a still ache that resurfaces in the indigenous Kichwa migrant community during the holiday season. The “algun dia mija…” (some day, mija), followed by the vibrant daydreams of rekindling connections with families in our territories—these are the winter songs I’ve grown up with since we migrated.
Sometimes I wonder how much of our innovation is a direct response to the violence of immigration. Pre-pandemic, our communities fiercely adapted, curated, and developed ceremonies and celebrations in direct connection with our communities of origin, in places that are quick to remind us that we ‘don’t belong.’ My mom curates an altar every new year cycle to pass on stories and memories. But recently she has started to include her own adaptations. One year, I remember she included all our immigration paperwork and pictures of all our family members together, you know, just in case.
Accommodating spaces to fit our current social contexts has been a method to keep protecting our culture, identity, and energies. Now during the pandemic, the same work continues as we see young generations fiercely taking up space in different multimedia platforms. It’s important to note that this work is originating in areas where economic access continues to be robbed and denied.
I close my eyes and my parents kiss my forehead as they head out to drive their feria van out of state this winter. Our small businesses have been tragically devastated due to capitalism and the pandemic, and many families who do not qualify for government aid are cut off from those lines of support. For many, that means being pressured to work in spaces/jobs that incentivize behaviors conducive to the spread of the virus. I think this pandemic has felt like an awakening to some, but to indigenous migrant workers, it has been a reminder to continue to strengthen our ‘Ayllu’-systems of defending and protecting each other. Because social distancing feels too familiar, it’s the way we’ve been treated—pushed aside because migrant labor has been immediately labeled as essential yet carries on failing to be protected as such every holiday season.
“Writing My Own Definition Of Tradition”
By Mekita Rivas
I’ve always had a tough time around the holidays because we didn’t have many traditions as a family. I grew up in a super small home. There wasn’t room for a huge Christmas tree or decorations. We didn’t have an ornate staircase, fireplace, or mantel. I can recall only a handful of times that we had one of those tiny fake trees and placed it on a side table in the living room. Sometimes we’d hang up icicle lights outside. But that was usually the extent of our Christmas spirit.
My mom was the one who put in the effort. My Mexican father wasn’t really into the holidays. He wasn’t exactly a Scrooge, but he wasn’t the dad who was going to wear an ugly sweater and tell stories by the fireplace. He did like watching the old Christmas movies on TCM. It’s A Wonderful Life was his favorite. My mom would cook a big meal on Christmas, but she’s a chef and Filipina, so that was pretty much an everyday occurrence anyway.
The Filipina community in my hometown of Lincoln, Nebraska hosted annual holiday potlucks. Those are probably my fondest and most vivid holiday memories. There was so much food — lumpia, rice, and pancit for days. I remember the Tinikling (a Filipino folk dance) performers who were so simultaneously graceful and strong. I wanted to be them, but I was a painfully shy child. One year, when I was in first or second grade, my mom signed me up to sing a Selena song — I think it was “I Could Fall In Love” — in front of the whole party. I ended up running off stage and crying in her arms. Again: painfully. shy.
At some point, we stopped going to the parties. I’m not sure why. My mom seemed increasingly disinterested in going year after year. She also stopped putting up the fake tree and icicle lights. It was hard because we were such a fragmented family. My parents divorced when I was six, but continued to live together until I was a senior in high school. It was a strange upbringing. And so our holiday “traditions,” or lack thereof, reflected that.
When my now-husband and I began dating, I wanted us to establish holiday traditions right away, to make up for lost time in a way. One of those traditions is having a real Christmas tree. We’ll typically go to a local tree farm and cut one down ourselves. We have an entire box of holiday decorations. We drink sparkling wine on Christmas morning while we open up our presents. For the past few years, we’ve gone to the same restaurant that has this massive buffett with all the traditional dishes.
In 2020, we’ll have to adjust some of these traditions. Since our favorite tree farm sadly isn’t selling trees this year, we purchased one from a tree lot down the street from our apartment. And the buffet will have to take place in the comfort of our home instead. But what will remain constant is that we’ll be together, creating and navigating traditions new and old to one day share with our future family.
“Ponche Navideño”
By Yollotl Lopez
My father left the Catholic church when he was eighteen. He also didn’t believe participating in Catholic traditions when he no longer followed the faith itself. That didn’t leave much for Christmas traditions that are not associated with the Judeo-Christian tradition. Growing up, there was no midnight mass, no posadas, and no piñata. Those traditions remained in Mexico with his Catholic family.
Food, however, was a different story. Ponche Navideño made an appearance every year. Every year he gathered the apples, dried prunes, cinnamon, honey, guavas and all other ingredients from the local Mexican market. Ponche Navideño is a staple of the Christmas posadas; the parades that reenact Mary and Joseph’s search for shelter. People in Mexico will walk through the streets carrying the baby Jesus from household to household while singing hymns and lighting candles. At each home, they are given tamales, buñuelos and Ponche Navideño. This punch will sometimes be served with a shot of mezcal, tequila or aguardiente. For us, there is no parade or baby Jesus, but there is always an outdoor fogata and my father’s large blue pot that he brought from Puebla. It’s the only Christmas tradition he has kept from his Catholic days.
This Christmas, as COVID-19 ravages through Southern California, my parents are quarantining. We can’t come together for the holidays, but my dad gives me his ponche recipe over the phone. “A ver como te sale, chamaca,” he tells me. I’ll give it my best shot.
“Keeping Belizean Traditions in Place”
By Nicole D. Ramsey
The holidays are a time when I feel most in tune with my culture and heritage. The holiday season is when I would also get to spend time with family and friends after being away for most of the year—this time would be spent catching up, eating rice and beans, and potato salad (Belizean style) and washing it all down with a cold glass of Rum Popo.
Growing up in a predominantly Protestant and Methodist family, Christmas mass/service was always a must and was attended before any celebration. The pandemic has forced folks, like myself, to lean more into my particular cultural traditions independent of the women in my family who have mastered the art of delicious Caribbean cooking. Making tamales and ducunu with my mother on Christmas Eve and gifting them to family and friends on Christmas is a tradition that we now have to navigate differently this year considering shelter-in-place orders. It will be a new tradition that will most likely include creative ways of sharing, making, and remixing traditional dishes with a pescatarian and semi-vegan twist (crossing fingers).
For me, food is memory and always transports me to a different time, spaces in both Belize and Los Angeles. I am embracing the change that this pandemic has brought to how I engage with my culture, traditions, and family through the digital realm as well; being able to connect with family through apps like WhatsApp and Facetime highlights the ways in which my family has always been transnational. I am optimistic about what new flavors, memories, and traditions will be cultivated.
*All images courtesy of authors.