Christmas Eve in El Mango
Darkness had just fallen when we arrived in El Mango for the 7 p.m. Christmas Eve Service at San Pedro y San Pablo. Light spilled out from the small cinder-block building where members of the parish waited to greet us.
One finds El Mango by watching carefully for the milestone #101, and then the small road, roughly cobble-stoned, that leads up a hill between the blue house and the shed where the bicycle repair shop used to be. The church is not far, only to the top of the rise, where we drove through the open gate of steel mesh wire fastened to posts.
High above us, a myriad of stars gleamed with a brilliance we never see in the city. One could imagine here how the Christmas star once shone 2000 years ago. Here amongst the country folk it is easy to picture shepherds watching their flocks in the quiet night. Just beside the church is a stable for cattle and perhaps a horse or two. It is a shed with a roof of narrow poles laid over a frame.
Horses are still important here, as cars are expensive and can scarcely manage the rugged village roads. An elderly man arrives on his white pony – his knees no longer have the strength to sustain the two-kilometre walk to the church. His spouse, also in her eighties, is able to come only on rare occasions.
Inside, the church is decorated and ready. Two bouquets of lush red flowers stand before the altar, and a lighted Christmas tree adorns one side of the chancel area. The "tree" is a branch of a deciduous tree stripped of its leaves, planted in a 4
-litre tin can with tall letters spelling out the product it once contained. White angels, made of small paper fans sprinkled with glitter, twinkle all over the tree amongst other homemade decorations, even a Santa Claus.Lay minister Mario Nuñez began the service of the Word. As Ed looks over the congregation, he sees a majority of small children and exchanges his prepared sermon for a simple retelling of the Christmas story. When he points to the stable just outside, an aged grandfather voices enthusiastic approval. Mostly grandparents have brought their grandchildren on this night. As Christmas Eve is when families celebrate in El Salvador (Christmas Day is not of importance), we presume the middle generations are preparing their dinners and other festivities.
Afterwards, a family invites us for a more or less traditional meal of chicken and gravy, salad, rice, tortillas y pan frances (white-flour buns), and grapes. The grapes, from nearby Guatemala, are customary for Christmas and New Year’s Eve. Around El Mango the main commercial crop is sugar cane, and on Christmas Eve whenever we were on the highway, sugar-cane trucks were still carrying their great loads of what looks like a whole forest of bundled sticks to the processing plants.
Warned not to travel on the highway late at night, we stayed at the Ágape Hotel in Sonsonate. Part of a large Franciscan centre with restaurant, hotel, retreat and conference centre, residences for the elderly, and space for other ministries, the buildings are scattered throughout garden-like grounds with a variety of plants and flowers. Inside the hotel all is quiet. There is a garden in the central patio with a flowing fountain. Although simple and
surprisingly inexpensive, this night in the inn reminded us of the millions of people who have no home, and how, a thousand years ago, a simple couple had to stay in a stable where they gave birth to the Saviour of the world.
