Christmas is a religious and cultural holiday celebrated in December—as we all know—a day to commemorate the birth of Jesus by joining in a radiant time of lights—a time traditionally reserved for welcoming family and friends in an act of boundless kindness and love…

 

How wonderful Christmas is, my friends! How the streets shine! The decorated houses are temples of contagious joy and sadness, especially when Christmas carols are heard: laughter, nostalgia for absent family: parents who are no longer present around the table, friends who have left, and the homeland. 

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It's a torrent of sensations and feelings unleashed, especially in these crucial times where displacement is endless, and fear, or worse, terror, pervades our lives in these unpredictable times. It's terrible that the country's immigrants have to hide during this holy and wondrous Christmas. 

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Every time I see a horrific robbery on television, my bones shudder and I feel fear, sadness, and humiliation because of the assaults and beatings that immigrants in this nation, which was once "a wonderful land of immigrants," are subjected to.

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This Christmas, please let the abuses, oppressions, and injustices stop. 

 

It's Christmas! It's a time for love and perseverance!

The Archdiocese of Miami, the seat of the Catholic Church—where I also write my columns and my Diocesan blog—is against the abuse of immigrants.

 

What great pain I feel!

It's Christmas! The birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, Son of Man, a time for piety to reign and spread, opening paths of light, love, and consideration for children. It's Christmas! A time to foster peace, mercy, and reconciliation among all people.

Here is my song: 

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Merry Christmas

A good time, the enormous loneliness, the poem

as nourishment, breathing as sustenance

on this clear day of fresh and holy Christmas.

Nothing is visible on the horizon anymore, but everything is blooming.

Everything brightens up; even in the midst of a storm, there is joy.

at the large, long family table: the uncles, the grandparents,

My cousins, my parents sitting at the end of the table.

 

A nostalgic, sorrowful day, remembering those

They are no longer giving away their smiles and hugs.

Like the family tree of so many lives

Some arrive and others depart; the memory flies far away.

It expands, in a serene, jovial, full proximity

of smiles and songs.

 

A magnificent era born from paradise

sunny, the immense fortune of goodwill,

of conceived sympathy, engendered by itself

in new shoots.

Christmas grants us eternity and hope, life.

and light, instant of peace, like glorious flight

of the angels.

 

 From my book “Born on an Island”