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 Christmas, at a Distance!

 

One Hundred and ten years ago, a 20-year-old young man, born on a small island in the middle of the Atlantic, raised in a poverty-stricken large family, a young man who did not know how to read or write, spent his first Christmas away from home, not knowing anyone, or the language of the new land. A secluded Christmas. After 20 Christmases at home with his family and friends, this young man from Terceira Island, in the archipelago of the Azores, spent Christmas of 1910 on a California ranch, working from sunrise to sunset, without his family or any friends, and certainly without the new technologies that today can bring us together. 

Almost seven decades later, in 1968, a daughter, son-in-law, and two grandchildren of this young man, recently arrived in California’s Central Valley, immigrating from the same island, and living on a ranch, not far from the one her father, father-in-law and grandfather had lived, spent a Christmas in solitude, far from everything and everyone.  A painful Christmas, without the luxuries of the communications we are blessed with during this pandemic.  Because they knew how to read and write, the letters that took weeks to cross the Atlantic and the vastness of the American continent accompanied them as they reread them with a tremendous saudade. Isolated Christmases have been part of the Azorean history for an exceedingly long time, with departures that have taken our people to various geographies of the Americas.

Today, with a global pandemic, Americans with Azorean roots, like most people in the world, will have to live (or at least should) Christmas at a distance. A Christmas, physically separated from those dear to us, even if they live geographically close.  Public Health officials, in the two major countries of our emigration (the immigration of more than a century ago and the immigration of the last four decades of the 20th century), Canada and the United States, ask us to be physically distant, suggesting that we use new the technologies, from Zoom to Facetime, to send our traditional Christmas kisses and hugs. They call upon for us to live the night of the consoada, virtually. 

It is not the celebration we all want this year or any Christmas. But Azoreans know this reality well. We were raised with farewells and faraway Christmases.  As the poet Almeida Firmino wrote: your seat at the table always empty and your voice increasingly distant.   Many without letters, others with a letter written weeks before the season, and later, much later, by telephone and by the magic of radio messages, a tradition from the not-too-distant past, that warmed the Azorean homes on both sides of the Atlantic.

 

 

Yes, Christmas 2020 will be vastly different. For Azorean-Americans and Azorean-Canadians, of all generations, aware of their history and cultural legacy, it is just the repetition, sweetened with the new technological platforms, of so many Christmases experienced by their ancestors.  The over-dramatization exhibited in certain segments of our Diaspora demonstrates that, unfortunately, not everyone is aware of the experiences of their forefathers.  A disconnect that saddens me, beyond the holiday.

No family wants to live Christmas at a distance! However, the choice will determine our commitment to our family, because as it was said: it is better to celebrate this Christmas without a traditional family celebration, than to have future Christmases without a family member. The choice, and the behavior within the families of the Azorean descendants, living in the North American continent, also determines the degree of distance that some of us live from our collective historical reality, as a people and culture.

Happy Holidays/Merry Christmas, a sentiment that even coming from afar, with the social distance of this Christmas, and the historical context of a bygone time, always encompass the unique feeling of a saudade that does not always weep but has always been an integral part of the Azores and the beloved Primos da América.

 

            Diniz Borges

 

 

 

Saudade—the so-called “untranslatable” term in the Portuguese language for longing, nostalgia, a constant blend missing a time and a place.

Consoada—The Portuguese term for Christmas eve and Christmas night. 

Primos da América—literally “The American Cousins”, but figuratively to signify that all Azoreans have a bond with America.