Yes, it’s my favorite season. You can blame my parents for that. They abused us by making every effort to ensure we children experienced the joy of Christmas every year we lived in El Pao. Did they not realize that those memories they took such pains to create would endure throughout all the years of our lives? For shame.
They also forced us to receive visits from my mother’s side of the family who, every Christmas, drove over an hour on the dirt/rock road (later, when the road was asphalted, it took 45 minutes or so) to our house in El Pao for Christmas dinner (something we’d reciprocate by visiting them, every year, on New Year’s Day). Ah, what visits! All the laughter and joy. How did we ever endure such mistreatment?
We even believed in Santa Claus! Yikes!
I recall rushing through our front screen door, which led to the screen-enclosed, spacious porch area, sparsely outfitted with a rattan lounge chair and small sofa to the left, and a tall wooden bookcase, built to order by Señor Montaño, the camp’s carpenter, to my right. These furnishings seemed, to me, to be permanently covered by what appeared to be clear plastic shower curtains to protect them from the mists and drizzle which would drift in through the screen windows during the rainy season. However, since Christmastime was not the rainy season, the diaphanous coverings were absent. But I’d see them anyway.
Then I’d hear the at once familiar diapason sounding forth from the living room, where the record player sat. The vinyl disc was a Christmas album by The Randolph Singers whose broad tessitura instantly announced the upcoming joyous season. It must be 1959, because we are only two children. To this day, whenever “The Boar’s Head Carol” or “The Wassail Song” or “Fum Fum Fum” is performed on radio or stage or disc, I can’t help but to compare such to The Randolph Singers.
A few nights later, the camp would shine with a host of blinking white lights interlaced among the scores of steady, multi-colored bulbs entwined throughout overhangs, bushes, and large boughs, and stately trunks and throughout the vast coronas of the Araguaneys. The lights were so many that the camp seemed a mini-Times Square in the eye of the jungle, forever stamping in my memory an enduring association of lights with Christmas.
A most apt association indeed as Jesus Christ is the Light of the world.
The aguinalderos would soon begin their sporadic visits, going door to door, singing with good cheer and hilarious make-them-up-as-you-go carols. The aguinalderos were the Venezuelan version of 20th century descendants of the medieval jongleurs, or English and French minstrels. These men were adept at playing the “cuatro”, a four-string, mini-guitar, the tambour, a lightweight, slender, but sufficiently long and loud percussion instrument, maracas, and, often, the guiro, a conical instrument with washboard-like grooves across which the musician would rasp a small wooden board.
But these men were even more adept at making up songs with pointed, relevant lyrics, often detailing some physical characteristics of the house at which they sang, or quirks of its inhabitants, along with some historical anecdotes about them; but all tying back to Christmas somehow, and all at the spur of the moment. Those who knew Spanish, would laugh uproariously, fully understanding and marveling at the jokes, the light sarcasm, the sweetness, but most of all, the agility. Those homes with little or no Spanish knowledge enjoyed the lively music, but only for a little while because it quickly began to sound repetitious, which it was to those not understanding what was being said.
Another two memories which come immediately to mind at Christmas.
Mrs. Bebita De La Torre had a beautiful and sweet singing voice. At Christmastime, events would be held at the camp club. One Christmas season night, it seemed the entire camp population fit into the main club hall and we stood around the hall about two lines deep and sang “Silent Night” in English and Spanish. I happened to have been placed right next to Mrs. Bebita. To me, her voice seemed to waft, to carry across the hall, even though it was not loud or overwhelming, and certainly not ostentatious. Towards the last verse, I just pretended to be singing, because I preferred to just hear her as she sang “Silent Night” next to me.
And then there’s “The Christmas Song”. The record player sits across the room from the tree under which many wrapped presents are placed and we children are being readied for bed. The silky soothing voice of Nat King Cole issues forth from the player and I know it is Christmas night.
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=the+randolph+singers&view=detail&mid=91822C3C81A5C580039B91822C3C81A5C580039B&FORM=VIRE
Should you like to hear one of The Randolph Singers Christmas albums
