Dear friends of Culture,
Christmas is just around the corner!
The glow of colourful lights has been accompanying us all over the world for quite some time. Christmas trees and twinkling stars. The palm trees on the island, wrapped in chains of lights but accepting this stoically, are particularly exotic during the Christmas season. But if you live here for a longer period of time, you are more likely to be irritated by the sled motifs and artificial snowflakes that are supposed to beautify the bright lampposts. A child who doesn't know what snow actually is may find it even harder to connect with these decorations than with a palm tree, which is currently standing in the wideness, especially decorated.
But in general, it seems to me that it has simply become more difficult to find something in the abundance, artificiality and coldness of Christmas decorations that you can connect with. Something that the eye likes to rest on and that reflects the light and warmth on the outside, which we may awaken within us during these days. Something that appeals to the mind, like a warming, fragrant beeswax candle on the Christmas tree.
Where can you find that here in Lanzarote?
For me, it is above all the nativity scenes, the Belenes, in which I can rediscover the magic of Christmas on the outside. Not only are some of the Lanzarotean landscapes reproduced with great craftsmanship, with their small whitewashed houses and cultivated areas, but the materials used also correspond to the local conditions. Small native plants are planted, such as verodes and tajinastes, and the miniature fields are properly cultivated and have to be watered for weeks during dry periods so that corn and beans can grow. The nativity scene is then set up somewhere in between, perhaps under a vaulted volcanic rock, with Mary, Joseph and the child embedded among the locals… becoming one of us!
Isn't this perhaps one of the great messages of Christmas? That space for the birth of Christ can be created not only in every culture, but also in every human being, from their very own reality of life. That the coming of Jesus Christ is a gift to every I.
A hunch that a glance at the cool, flashing lights of plastic trees reminiscent of Las Vegas would never have given me!
I wish you a Christmas full of true light!
Mikaela Nowak
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