Christmas in Argentina
Global Missions Newsletter for December by Justin Haaheim
Dear Friends and Family,
Les mando besos y abrazos fuertes de Argentina. Warm greetings to you all. I hope that this Christmas season is rich with happiness for you, and that you are uplifted by the presence of good friends and loving family. 
Far away as I am, I too am blessed to be able to have loved ones to spend Christmas and New Years with. Dorea, my girlfriend, is coming soon on a trip that I think we’ve been planning since May when I first accepted to do this program here. She and I will be spending Christmas with Alan Eldrid, a good friend and pastor in the Lutheran Church, at his house. For New Years, Dorea and I will be traveling south to an area in Northern Patagonia called the “Lake District” to do some hiking and sight-seeing. Now that I think about it, between Dorea being around, the cooler temperatures, and an abundance of lakes, things might actually start to seem like Minnesota!
…Yeah, I’m homesick. I guess my homesickness hasn’t been exactly what I expected, because I don’t feel so much that I want to *go* home. I had a dream the other night in which I had traveled home for a few weeks, but for as nice as it was to be back I had this feeling like I wasn’t where I supposed to be. It’s kind of hard to explain, but I just know that I’m in the right place right now. Nevertheless, I find myself really missing things like Minnesota winter and snow (I know, it sounds crazy), Gustavus, Christmas lights, Christmas carols in English, my mom’s brownies and cranberry bread, the occasional Chipotle burrito, and of course most of all, family and friends.
Christmas is certainly upon us, though, here in Argentina. On Avenida Corrientes, one of the big streets in the capital, they’ve hung star decorations and garlands on the light posts. There are also a number of big Christmas-tree-shaped decorations near parts of the freeways around Buenos Aires made by hanging Christmas lights from big light poles. In church we’ve been lighting candles on our Advent Wreath for each week of Advent. And at Unicenter, the big shopping mall in the area, there’s a Santa Claus (“Papá Noel”) and a Nativity scene and Christmas music playing over the sound system (and a super-charged air conditioning system which, with the presence of some USey-type stores and the smattering of propaganda in English, makes me feel like I’ve walked out of Argentine summer and into a wintery Mall of America).
At La LecherÃa we’ve put up some Christmas decorations on the walls and a little Christmas tree in the corner, and I actually had kind of a fun exchange with a 6th grade English student of mine when they were decorating the Christmas tree a couple days ago. The English lesson was going really slowly, and the student was struggling a lot connecting concepts and keeping up his attention. In one moment, he looked outside the room we were in and saw them decorating the tree and observed:
“Están vistiendo el árbol.”
“They are decorating the Christmas tree.”
Except that for me the more common usage of the word for “decorating” (“vistiendo”) is “to dress”, as in “to dress yourself in the morning”, or “he dresses well”. Makes sense, but when I heard him say that I thought of them putting pants and a jacket and a little hat on the tree. I replied:
“SÃ. Estaba todo desnudo.”
“Yeah. It used to be all naked.”
He laughed, and then I laughed, and then we talked for a while about the idea of them putting clothes on the tree. Maybe it seems silly, but we kind of connected in that moment — something that I’ve learned to cherish here amongst the times of brokenness of communication, cultural understanding, and personal understanding. If this year is about accompaniment and “walking together”, then maybe I can see these moments of connection as a break in a current I feel like I walk against. I don’t have to ask “¿Que?”, I don’t have to find another way to say what I’m trying to say, I don’t have to be conscious about how I’m different, I don’t have to feel looked-at, I don’t have to find a way as I walk through the barrio to respond to shouts of insults and names, or to joking or serious pleas for money, I don’t have to worry about being messed around with or touched or grabbed, and I don’t have to walk away from those same moments with indignance and sadness and an anger I know I shouldn’t have for those people that seem to only want to tear me down. For a moment, there’s no current, and instead the peace of seeing some holy presence in what I’m doing, illuminated by the light of connection in a disconnected world.
I was really glad for that moment a couple days ago. I was going to write here that moments like that are redeeming for me, but I think in truth those moments don’t redeem my experience or my work. Day by day these kids show me the goodness that is always in the people around me, young and old, and even those people that make it their business to harass me. Before I started writing tonight I was listening to some of Gustavus’ Christmas in Christ Chapel service from 2003, listening to a part of the service where Chaplain Brian offers prayers between verses of “O God of Love” sung by the choir. He says: “Grant that as we see our brothers and sisters around the world, so may we greet the Christ presence in each child of God, and extend the peace which passes our human understanding.” Amen.
May you be blessed and filled with love this Christmas. “Felices fiestas.” Merry Christmas and a happy new year.
Peace,
Justin
Pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/justin.haaheim
Google group site with my previous newsletter: http://groups.google.com/group/justins-yagm-friends
ELCA site with information on my program: http://www.elca.org/globalserve/youngadults