Smells like child’s spirit

by Teresita Pumará

I

6.12.2017.

The snow falls heavily on Düsseldorf. At last, I think, looking through the kitchen window, Christmas like it is supposed to be according to Coca-Cola Co. and Hollywood. I grew up in Buenos Aires. Christmas there is always around 30°C warm. I drink my latte and watch the snow as it falls and builds a thick tapestry on the floor. I change windows. The one in the living room gives me a view of the street. Two very young people, barely coming out of teenage, step out of a car and start dancing and throwing snow balls at each other. Although the sky is covered by one monotonous layer of grey, the reflective moonlight of snow fills the Earth. Later I wander through the nearby park. People of all ages play with the snow: they build snow-balls and snow castles and fortresses (it is Germany after all), they simulate snow ball wars and slide down the soft slopes with improvised sledges. The snow seems to bring out the best of people, their playful joyous self. White, after all, is the colour of new beginnings. All our faults are washed away and we are left as an Aristotelian tabula rasa, free of the burden of the past year and ready to fulfil the destiny that will be written on us. A necessary renewal for every functional society. It is Germany after all.

II

19.12.2017

The rain falls insistently on Cologne. Maybe I should write: the clouds have come down, they surround us and now we swim instead of walking. We arrive at the Christmas market at the Cologne Cathedral. The monstrous Dom supervises our movements. We stroll from stand to stand like forgotten children. The stands are shaped like wooden houses and warmly lit. They offer food and hot drinks, puppets and Christmas decorations. A band of wind instruments plays popular songs, I sing to the tune: 

I'm on the top of the world lookin’ down on creation,

And the only explanation I can find,

Is the love that I've found ever since you've been around,

Your love's put me at the top of the world. 

People, mainly adults who have just come out of work, eat and drink and smoke and talk and some even dance slightly to the rhythm of the Carpenters. Don´t they feel the rain, or is it only raining on us, South American wanderers? It does rain for them, but they do not mind. They meet in the market with neighbours and friends they have not seen during the year. I feel inside a scale model or a puppet house. Everything around me suggests a white barbed artisan delighting himself with our comings and goings. We are the children who play under the agreeable eye of the craftsman.

III

20.12.2017

What is Christmas about? I ask myself repeatedly. I am not religious, at least not now. Nevertheless, in my crooked cynical way, I take part in many of its games. I play with the snow, I feel happy with the tiniest present, I visit Christmas markets and eat hot chestnuts, and on this day, I prepare delicious melomakaronas with my Greek neighbour. Melomakaronas are a Greek Christmas pastry bathed in honey syrup. My neighbour, Maria, comes on this Wednesday afternoon, we drink wine, talk about our lives, compare our traditions, and she prepares the Greek delicacy while I watch and learn. My house fills with the smell of honey and baked pastry. Heaven, I believe, must smell like a bakery. I feel joyful like an angel -not a Wim Wenders angel-, I want to take people´s hands and dance in a row.

IV

23.12.2017

It has been dark for hours now and we wish to watch a light comedy. We are far away from our families and are feeling a little nostalgic, but we don't want to welcome the spirit of sadness in our home, which still smells of melomakarona and natilla, the last a Colombian Christmas dessert. Honey and cinnamon sound like an appropriate gift for a new-born child. Internet offers us a Christmas comedy and we indulge it. Elf (Jon Favreau, 2003) is about a man, Buddy, who is raised by an elf at Santa's workshop in the North Pole. Buddy believes he is an elf until, when he is thirty years old, the truth is revealed. He then travels to New York City in search of his father. But, as elves live longer than biblical characters and grow up slowly, Buddy has a child's spirit. With this spirit, he introduces a little chaos in the New York functional system. Little by little, through his innocence and sense of wonder, he reminds people of what is actually important (love, not work) and brings the Christmas spirit back to the city, thus enabling Santa to fly with his sledge without using a motor. In Christmas we celebrate life, a new life. New life is a disruptive, playful flow. It is necessary to plunge into this flow at least once a year; to experience how easily our everyday routines may crumble down and how easily they put themselves together again; to feel how strong we become when we bond with others, and yet how fragile these bonds are, like the smell of honey and cinnamon. Fragile, but powerful when it comes to struggling against sadness and fear. I cannot but think of Patti Smith’s verses. People have the power to dream, to rule, to wrestle the world from fools.