Christmas – The Pull Of The Land

Home For Christmas

December 23, 2025December 23, 2025 Richard Barnes

In past letters or posts I’ve referred to a family reunion that took place shortly before Christmas in 2006. For that occasion we compiled a video, of which we made DVDs along with soundtrack CDs to give to each of us to take home as a memento.

One of the selections is the Coplandesque “Short Trip Home”, composed by Edgar Myer and performed by a classical and bluegrass quartet: violin, bass, mandolin, and guitar. I know it doesn’t sound promising, but check the YouTube link below (if you are reading this on the blog) and decide for yourself after giving it a hearing.

My son and I picked this selection to play as the DVD displayed a 1972 family photo, which served as the basis for the reunion. We had the piece reprise towards the end. Our extended family has had a good balance of the country and the city, the folk and the highbrow. In our view the piece embraces that balance and is a fitting background to those of us in that picture throughout our lives.

Unfortunately the topic of home and Christmas has become so gooey as to have lost all meaningful significance. In other words, listening to Glenn Campbell’s rendition of Sammy Cahn’s “There’s No Place Like Home” misses the mark by a mile, in my opinion. “I’ll Be Home For Christmas” is better, but not by much.

Each of these songs and others like them aim for sentiment, which has its place, of course. It’s not that I don’t like the songs; it’s simply that home means so much more to me and these songs don’t touch the outskirts of that meaning.

When I was a kid, I’d often hear my mother tell me to “remember whose you are”. By that she meant both God and family, or home. Regretfully, I did not always remember. However, that admonition left a mark on me. And it’s obvious that many of our parents said similar things to my cousins and other loved ones because they all seemed to have an idea of their duty to what has gone before.

About 12 years ago, looking for a grocery store in a foreign land, I drove by a large intersection, one corner of which had large plastic bags before which sat a woman with 4 or 5 small children, all begging. I had been warned not to stop when I saw such a sight, for it could be dangerous to do so; that if I wanted to give, there were other means available. I did pray for her and the children and gave elsewhere.

However that sight immediately hit me: why was I not born in such a place and in such circumstances? Indeed, why was I not born, say, in a tribe in 1420 in what we know as Mexico, easy prey to the cannibalistic Aztecs? When we pause for just a moment to think on such matters, if we are honest, we cannot but marvel at the Lord’s sovereign care for us and our duty to Him and to others. Properly understood, this ought to humble us and to inspire us to eternal gratitude.

My grandfather was born in Massachussets, my father, in Cuba. My mother was born in Venezuela as were her ancestors. But their heritage was Christian. The title of my blog is The Pull of The Land and most of my posts have to do with the land of my birth, Venezuela.

However, when I’ve traveled to Spain or to England, I have sensed the pull there also. Unmistakably. I very much enjoyed my visits to other lands and wish I could visit them again. However, if given the choice (besides Venezuela) I’d vote for Spain or England. The pull is that strong.

And if you pause to consider your own home and your own background, I daresay you also sense that pull. I believe the Lord puts that pull in us all. Once again, I agree with Whittaker Chambers: “No land has a pull on a man as the land of his childhood.”

In my view, the source of such a calling to one’s roots is simple gratitude.

Gratitude to the Lord for having given you your parents and those who went before; your culture and background; your experiences; and most of all your Christianity, which can only come through faith by God’s grace through Jesus Christ, the Second Person of The Trinity incarnated on that first Christmas a couple of millennia ago.

It’s all a gift. And home ought to bring forth that recognition and the accompanying gratitude. Even if your childhood was not a happy one, you can still be grateful. Reading Whittaker Chambers’s powerful autobiography, Witness, you readily see that his childhood was not a rosy one. Yet he was a grateful man.

Going back to that 1972 reunion, the DVD and CD closed with John Rutter’s arrangement of “The Lord Bless You and Keep You”. This hymn was sung at the conclusion of each worship service, every Sunday, year after year, at the Community Church where Aunt Sarah would take us whenever we were in Miami with her.

We are fully persuaded that the Lord has indeed been good to us. He, the only Constant in life and eternity, adds delight and joy to our lives as we seek to please Him.

We are well; grateful for decent health which enables us to continue to visit with one another throughout the year and hopeful we can continue doing so throughout next year as well.

And grateful to old friends, including our parents’ friends, who continue to challenge us to do good.

Our family wishes yours a Very Merry Christmas and a prosperous 2026.

Family get-together, December, 1972

Short Trip Home

The four siblings with our Cousin Janis, March, 2025, after Cousin Vivian’s burial

With the grandchildren, summer, 2025

Christmas 2024

December 25, 2024December 25, 2024 Richard Barnes

July 21 marked our fortieth anniversary. These have been years of joy and laughter along with periods of great sorrow and tears. We have been blessed by people — whether friends or short-lived acquaintances — each of whom played a role in molding us. I credit them for the positive impacts and blame myself for the negative.

For example, earlier this year, as I searched for a misplaced item, I found an old curio and immediately recognized it as a gift from an elderly couple whom we had met on our honeymoon. At one of the ports of call, they had gone to a curiosity shop and bought it, and gifted it to us at dinner. I had not thought of them for decades. But the item instantly brought them back to my recollection. Given their age in 1984, I can only assume they have long since passed away by now, but their sunny disposition and sincere care for us has been an encouragement and inspiration since the moment I again saw their gift. And it was a mild rebuke for my having forgotten them.

As Lillie and I thought about options to celebrate our anniversary, the choice became an easy one: why not return to Kalamazoo, Michigan, where we began life as a married couple and where we still have friends who continue to influence us to this day? As I wrote in Lullaby

“Whenever I count my blessings, I think of my parents and grandparents and the life and heritage they bequeathed me.

“I think of El Pao and childhood friends.

“And I always think of Kalamazoo.

“I vividly recall flying to that town for the first time in the early summer of 1984. As the plane approached and the green fields and lakes — so many lakes! — came into view, my heart was powerfully drawn to that small midwestern city that I had hardly ever heard about (except in a Glenn Miller song).

“The folks I met, my interactions with clerks, executives, factory workers, children, immediately brought El Pao to my mind. The Midwest became more than a geographical touchpoint: it immediately became a part of me … because it was always a part of me, only I did not know it. The ready friendship and transparency of our neighbors, church brethren, professional colleagues, mechanics, you-name-it, was a throwback to my childhood in El Pao and purlieus. It was coming home to a home you did not know you had.”

Thomas Wolfe titled one of his works, You Can’t Go Home Again. In the novel he expands on this, “You can’t go back home to your family, back home to your childhood … back home to a young man’s dreams of glory and of fame … back home to places in the country, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting, but which are changing all the time — back home to the escapes of Time and Memory.”

Agree. However, one can return — must return! — to some extent: the extent of gratitude and recognition of the strong foundations. One can return to say “thank you” and to build upon that groundwork or to say “I’m sorry” and make things right as necessary. Living in the past is neither healthy nor helpful. Christianity does not worship the past; however, we should recognize it and appreciate it and build upon it.

It was good to be back — back to good people we have long missed but whom, seeing again, seemed like yesterday. Back to sights which never faded in our mind’s eye.

We returned from Kalamazoo to be met by 12 of our 13 children and five of our eight grandchildren, along with other loved ones, including nephews and grandnephews. It was quite a party.

And we are grateful.

__________________

I remember the first time someone reacted negatively when I wished him a Merry Christmas. It was 1975 and several of us were signing off for the year. As I headed to the door I saw two colleagues and offered them the traditional Christmas greeting. One replied in kind; the other, with a mocking “Ho! Ho! Ho!”. That only elicited laughter from me as I replied likewise, but in light hearted form.

It was only upon returning to the office in early January when the other colleague informed me that my greeting had offended the “Ho! Ho! Ho!” fellow, which came as a shock to me as I’d never heard of someone being offended by a Christmas greeting. The mining camp of my birth was peopled with folks from all walks of life, yet all enjoyed this special season as reflected in several past posts, for example, here.

There followed an era of hesitant well-wishing, but, thankfully, that ended not too many years later when I saw that some people were outspoken in their celebrations of what can only be described charitably as filth. And this hesitancy was buried even further during and after my years in the Middle East where my Muslim and Hindu friends had no hesitancy in wishing me a Merry Christmas and a Happy Easter even though they themselves did not believe in the Incarnate and Risen Lord.

Some people, sadly, are permanently offended and if we kowtow to them we allow the universe to be ruled by the dog in the manger. This does not give us license to be rude; however, it surely must not muzzle our joy in the Lord, which is our strength.

Our celebration has a Focus; it is not a celebration for the sake of a celebration; it is not a rejoicing merely for rejoicing. Such merrymaking is surely short lived and hollow. The Lord makes our rejoicing very real, indeed. We know Him and so we rejoice. And we sincerely desire and invite others to also rejoice with us.

In that spirit, we wish you and yours a very Merry Christmas and a prosperous 2025.

Elizabeth, Tyler, Jonathan, Joseph, Samuel, Nathan, Esther, John, Rachel, Rebekah, Andrew, Richard, and Christopher. Brothers-in-law Les and wife, Nancy, and David and nieces Emma and Olivia. Lillie’s mother: Myrna. Grandchildren, Grace, Emily, Beverly, Sarah, James. Not pictured, nephew Jordan and his family. Unable to be present: Charles, Essie and grandchildren, Ebenezer, Ada, Rosemary.

Christmas 2023

December 21, 2023December 21, 2023 Richard Barnes

Lillie and I married in 1984 and that year we wrote our first annual Christmas letter. Our intent was to write one annually. We did so through our 2018 letter, marking 35 Christmases touching base with our friends and loved ones.

We’d like to resume our letters, not because you badly need to hear from us; but rather because we need to communicate with you.

The “big event” this year was my mother’s passing away from this earth and into glory with her Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, Whose birth we celebrate this season. The events leading up to, and including, her death are very vivid in my mind and I suppose they will remain so for the rest of my life. We buried her in Fairburn, Georgia, next to her beloved husband, Charles, our father, who preceded her in death by 41 years.

Life with father and mother seems like yesterday. I can still hear my father’s voice announcing his arrival from work or from a trip to the store. And I can hear my mother’s reply.

Memories can be a great joy, so long as one does not live in the past but rather uses the past as a stepping stone to advancing his calling in life. We do not worship our ancestors; rather we honor our parents and our elders — those who came before — because we know that unless we stand on their shoulders we will not do well in life. But, more critically, because God commands us to. To worship ancestors is to stagnate; to denigrate them is to destroy the future; to honor them is to progress and to help our children and grandchildren do so as well.

I am grateful for my parents and seldom do I live a day when I do not recall or act upon a gem of truth or a piece of advice given to me by them. I hope I will be half as profitable to my children and grandchildren as my father and mother were to me. I am also grateful for my birth in El Pao, Venezuela, and my childhood years there. I had good childhood friends and wonderful teachers whose wisdom persists despite the passing of the years. I am thankful for the privilege of having grown amongst Americans of different states and Latin Americans of different countries. Looking back, I can clearly see what an honor and benefit that was to me and to my own family.

Whenever I visited my father’s burial place, I would walk past Shingo’s grave. Shingo was a member or our small country church in Fairburn. The site always had flowers which I understood were placed by his sister who cared for the site for decades. In my last two or three visits to my father’s site earlier this year I noticed that Shingo’s tomb had no flowers. During my mother’s burial and for two visits afterwards, Shingo’s tomb remained bare. I can only suppose that his sister has either moved out of state or has passed away.

I know that over time, most graves will become unvisited. That thought saddens me and reminds me that most of us will not be long remembered after we leave this earth. It is good to know, however, that our Lord does remember and He will accompany us throughout our lives and as we walk through the valley of the shadow of death. And He will also raise us from our tombs on that Great Day to live eternally in a New Heaven and a New Earth.

That, too, is part of the great story of Christmas.

Two grandchildren, James and Ada, were born in March and January to Elizabeth and Tyler and to Charles and Essie, respectively. They have added to the rambunctious joys of family visits, along with their siblings and cousins, Grace, Ebenezer, Emily, and Beverly. And there are two more on the way: one to Esther and the other to Essie.

This year marked my 70th birthday. My children gave me a great gift, the Folio Society edition of George Eliot’s great novel, Middlemarch, which I look forward to reading early next year. In closing this year’s letter, it is appropriate to quote from that work:

The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

Be faithful.

Merry Christmas to you and yours, now and always.

Taken on September 11, 2023, after my mother’s funeral. I was not feeling well and had no idea that my children had aligned behind us in birth order. Thank you, dear children. And beloved wife.

My parents’ graves in Fairburn, Georgia.

Christmas Memories and The Pull of the Land

December 25, 2020December 25, 2020 Richard Barnes

Each of us creates memories which, properly interpreted, become the figurative or metaphysical tissue of one’s life and home and of the communities in which one lives out his existence on earth. Our very lives run a course that is greatly fashioned by memories sown and cultivated decades and centuries before our birth.

Some children have a stronger “connection” to that generational memory than others. For example, many children almost instinctively ask their parents to tell them about “when you were a boy” or “tell me about grandmother,” etc., while others do not ask such questions. In such cases, many parents “volunteer” such stories. In doing so they play a part in perpetuating those generational memories, although they might not think about it in that context.

Memory creates history and determines relations between nations and civilizations. For example, someone wrote that the “conflicting memories of World War I left a gulf between Europe and the United States, one that has shaped their relations down to the present.” The literature engendered by that war further strengthened the outlines of the memories which persist to this day. For an analysis of that literature, I would recommend Paul Fussell’s The Great War and Modern Memory.

Similar conclusions can be drawn, perhaps even more forcefully, about the memories created over the centuries of the Spanish and English empires and their often deleterious influence on the relations between the United States and Latin America. Philip Wayne Powell’s Tree of Hate is a scholarly yet accessible study of that phenomenon.

A nation’s memory is but a fruit or product of her people’s collective memories, sown, and harvested over many generations. And, for many of us, childhood Christmases are a great part of such collective memories.

Many have noted the sadness and depression experienced by many in America during the Christmas season. Mental health professionals offer many reasons for this, including loneliness, anger at perceived commercialization of the season, subliminal envy at seeing or perceiving a joy in others, and more.

Perhaps a major reason for sadness is the nostalgia brought forth by childhood memories, especially those of Christmas, and a longing for recreating such times now, as older adults. Of course, one cannot re-puff soufflé, and if that is one’s goal, it will be met with failure.

Nevertheless, that does not mean one would do wrong to pause, dim the lights, sit on the sofa or easy chair, contemplate the Christmas tree, and remember those childhood days of Christmas….

Standing next to the diminutive Mrs. Bebita de La Torre singing “Noche de Paz” in the club on Christmas Eve. She was very short, but I was lots shorter than she at the time. I know, because her beautiful voice drew my attention and I could not help but look up to see her singing.

Rehearsing our school Christmas plays. Learning the words of Christmas hymns, especially as we rehearsed in the home of Mrs. Shingler, who worked indefatigably to make us all feel at home and whose visage immediately comes to mind whenever I think of Christmases in El Pao.

Receiving my aunt and uncle and cousins on Christmas Day. We would repay the visit on New Year’s Day by driving to their home in San Félix.

Bing Crosby, Perry Como, and Frank Sinatra singing Christmas Hymns and The Robert Shaw Chorale doing so more magnificently. Listening to Nat King Cole sing “The Christmas Song”, and not wondering how he knew I was hoping to see reindeer.

Accompanying my mother to set up the record player in the small church in the labor camp and play Handel’s Messiah, an event which attracted many in the camp to the church building to listen to a free concert.

Waking up on Christmas Days over the years of childhood and finding a silver bike, a roller coaster (I still can’t believe my father put that together overnight in the back yard), water rockets, a Lionel Ho electric train, a German-made rifle … opening presents around the tree.

Hearing the preacher caution us to remember that many children get nothing for Christmas and to be compassionate and to share.

Receiving visitors from households in the camp; they’d come and go, offering Christmas greetings and, often, gifts.

Visits by the aguinalderos with their expert musicianship and their hilarious lyrics; rewarded by my father with generous tips.

Childhood friends and their parents, many of whom are now gone.

Reading the Christmas story from Luke as we sat before the Christmas tree, and much, much more.

Those memories are not unique. What I mean is they are memories that are replicated numberless times over generations, with variations due to location and family traditions. Multiplied by the million, they serve to create mystical bonds across time and space that provide a common “pull”, a common experience, a common or shared memory. In this case, an American and Venezuelan memory.

For me, the pull of the land is in large measure the pull of memory. Not just childhood memory, but generational memories even of those whom I have never met but whose lives and works I and my generation inherited. That pull is strong; it is even felt by short-term visitors to Venezuela.

Others may be able to develop this much further than I.

But for now, it is important to point out that memories in and of themselves are not what bring joy. Memories are not the source of joy although their origins do proceed from that Source. Material things or events do not engender joy. Joy does not even spring from a happy childhood, as magical as that can be. Joy issues from the Person for Whom Christmas is named: Jesus Christ, God in the flesh.

He is the foundation for all that is good in our lives, whether or not we recognize it.

While it is true that, as some have so eloquently noted, the Christianity of mid-century America tended to be bland or generic, it was nevertheless recognized and honored. To attack Christmas in that time would have resulted in an invitation to leave town. That has changed, of course, but the memory is still there and is still strong. That explains the frenetic attempts to erase it.

But we can strengthen that generational memory by building, not on the manifestations of the memory, but on its Foundation: Jesus the Christ and His eternal Word. And as we build, the fruits will manifest themselves not only in evidences many of us remember fondly from our childhoods, but in many more that our children and grandchildren will remember and appreciate.

His Word promises this.

And after all, He is the Word made flesh.

Merry Christmas to all!

Memorable Christmastime in Puerto Ordaz in 1978. Speaking with the late Mr. Beran about the Venezuelan situation at the time.

The quintessential Venezuelan Christmas dish is the *hallacas*, a sort of “meat pie” encrusted in cornmeal and wrapped in banana or plantain leaves and boiled for several hours. The taste is sweet and spicy, but not “hot”, savor. The meat includes raisins, olives, pickled vegetables and more. It takes much work and time and is only served at Christmastime.

Young patient in a pediatric ward receives a surprise Christmas gift, circa 1955.

Provocative analysis of literature produced by men of that generation: traces the shift from romanticism and purpose to nihilism and futility.

Powerful analysis of centuries of superficial readings or discussions of the Spanish Empire and the deleterious impact of such superficial understanding (memory) on relations with Spain and Latin America.

Christmas Sorrows

January 3, 2020January 3, 2020 Richard Barnes

“Hey, why are all the Christmas lights off?” I had said to no one in particular one night. My mother and father were out. So I dutifully began plugging all Christmas lights back into their respective power outlets, fully expecting hearty congratulations the next morning, for having had the self-initiative to have covered my parents’ gross oversight in not having switched on the season’s bright and lively bulbs.

Reactions, congratulatory or otherwise, would not have to wait till morning.

As I was plugging in an old, petrified Orinoco bough laced sparingly with small, white lights — a lovely, natural Christmas-embellished furnishing with a place of honor in the front, enclosed porch from where it could be enjoyed by anyone passing by on the lower side of the block — my parents drove up.

I was stunned, expressionless, as they rushed in, unplugging every light they came across. “The Christmas lights are on!” my mother anxiously exclaimed as she reached to the nearest socket and pulled the plug. My father was outside, pulling the plugs there.

What on earth? Christmas season in the camp extended well beyond the 25th of December. Festivities lived on at least through January 6th, Día de Reyes Magos (Epiphany), and in many cases beyond, especially in the labor camp.

I looked outside, through the porch screens, and noticed that neither of our immediate neighbors had a single light on. I suppressed the urge to run outside to see if any lights were on in the entire block. I rightly suspected that none were.

Standing there, in the middle of the passageway between the porch and living room, my father’s voice explained the matter, “Son, I realize you were thinking we somehow forgot to turn on these lights tonight, but did you forget that Mr. Fuentes died today?”

Of course I had not forgotten. Mr. Fuentes was a corpulent, true-to-stereotype jolly man who delighted in greeting children at the club and elsewhere in the camp. A Spaniard who had left Spain for greener pastures in Venezuela, he was well-liked. His wife possessed a sharp wit and hearty laughter, yet retained that lighthearted femininity so characteristic of Spanish women. They had one young daughter.

He had suffered a heart attack as he drove a company pickup to the Otro Campo (labor camp). The vehicle had gone over a small cliff of about fifty feet. Mr. G____ had been driving behind him and raised the alarm. But, according to the camp’s doctor, he had expired before the pickup had crunched to a stop at the bottom.

Afterwards, as the weeks and months went by, every time I accompanied my father or mother to the Otro Campo, as the automobile approached and passed by the spot where Mr. Fuentes had gone over, I would look, conscious that no one paused. Cars came and went by that spot as if nothing had ever happened there; as if he had been forgotten as quickly as he had died. Life is for the living, and must go on.

But there is a time for sorrow and the entire camp was in mourning that Christmastime; it was understood no festive lights would be switched on for at least two days, if not three. Grief was a shared passion there. I now felt I had violated that shared spirit of compassion and felt utterly miserable. My father pulled me to himself, “I know you meant well, son. We should have told you clearly why we left the lights off.”

That was his way of apologizing. And my love and respect for him increase all the more.

That year, the block without any lights shining those nights was sorrowfully dark indeed. The joy of Christmas outweighed the sorrow, but did not erase it totally. The season was joyous, yet serious. Like the profoundly evocative Wexford Carol, it bade all to consider well and bear in mind its eternal as well as temporal import — after all, the world has never been the same since that first Christmas. This juxtaposition of joy and quiet seriousness may have appeared contradictory to more sophisticated, technically oriented observers, but not to me as a boy.

Paradoxical perhaps, but not contradictory.

So, still being within the twelve days of Christmas, I again wish you all a Merry Christmas and also a most prosperous new year. We may not know what the year brings, but we certainly do know Him in Whom all things consist, including every single day of our lives.