A Solitary Christmas

by EMMANUEL R. FERNANDEZ

     “Solo uno?” (“Just one?”) curiously asked the fish vendor when I replied that I needed just one piece out of the rows of fish at his counter.  “Si, solo uno, per favore” (“Yes, just one, please”)  I assured him, and realized why he wanted to make sure I needed just one piece.  It was seven hours before Christmas.   People were making their last-minute purchase of the food items they needed for their Christmas celebrations.  Most of them were buying food to be shared by at least two people.   And there I was buying food good for just one.

     As I left his stall, the thought that I was going to spend Christmas utterly alone began to tear at my heart.   My mind flew back to the Philippines and hovered over the faces of my loved ones there.  By this time, I surmised, the Midnight Mass would be over.  Everyone would soon be gathered around the dining table for the traditional noche buena.   Mama would pray a long Blessing, thanking God for all the graces the family had received during the year, as well as the storms it had weathered with His help.   Papa would generously compliment those who had prepared the food on how well they cooked.  Everyone would eat to his heart’s content.   Afterwards, we would all proceed to the living room for the exchange of gifts.   The grown-ups would be as excited as the kids.  But, it would be the younger ones’ thrill at the gifts they had received that would make such moments truly a time of joy. 

     My mind also hovered over the faces of my closest friends back home, and the happy moments I had shared with them at Christmastime.  As I drove from the grocery store to my apartment, I could feel a fog of loneliness slowly creeping into my heart.

     Luckily, a thought soon fell on me like a warm blanket out of nowhere.  It dawned on me that, in just a few years after I left the ministry, I had fallen into the very trap I had often warned people against in my erstwhile preaching:   I had unwittingly begun to mistake the “wrappings” of Christmas for the “gift” itself.  I had begun to associate Christmas more with being in the company of friends and loved ones, with having fun and exchanging gifts…  I had somehow lost sight of what Christmas was truly all about:  a time to thank God for loving us so much that He decided to become a man like us so He could be a part of our life in the deepest sense imaginable.

     I realized that God probably meant me to be absolutely alone that particular Christmas so I could be “rid” of the people and things that had somehow hidden the real meaning of this event from my eyes.  He had temporarily taken them away from me so I could experience what the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore once described in a poem as “the bare infinity of [God’s] uncrowded presence.”

     Shortly after I got home at around 6:15, my loved ones and closest friends called me from the Philippines, as they promised they would.  I had the chance to spend a few minutes talking with each of them.  At another time, hearing their voices would have made me feel more homesick.  But, not this time.  I felt elated to be in touch with them, even if only by telephone.

     I had dinner all by myself at around 8 o’clock; and at a little past ten I left for St. Peter’s Basilica to attend the Pope’s Midnight Mass there.  The sky over St. Peter’s Square was hardly Christmassy.  Only a few stars were visible that evening.  But, as I crossed the square towards the Basilica, I had the growing feeling that, strangely enough, that particular Christmas was going to be one of my happiest.  

     “You’ll never know that God is all you need until God is all you’ve got,” wrote Rick Warren in his best-selling book, The Purpose Driven Life.*   Finding myself with no one for company at Christmas except God Himself, I remembered that He was, in truth, all that I really needed for Christmas.

NOTE

     *Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Life (Metro Manila, Philippines:  OMF Literature, Inc., 2003), 194.