Another Christmas Tale
Dec 21 '00
Well, Christmas is coming again, and still many people join themselves around a table and tell Christmas stories to each other - some are real, some aren't, but they all seem to awake that "old" spirit in us. We surely need to have a place for other people's lives in our hearts every once in a while.
I decided to put this history here after giving it a little thought. After talking about it with some people at home, the thought came to me: "People at Epinions would probably find it interesting," so here it goes.
In Brazil Christmas happens at Summertime. At Curitiba, South of Brazil, we have about 30 Celsius under a dangerous sunlight and we have to use sunblock all the time, especially our kids. So you see, even though we have a Santa Klaus figure around here, and even though people in Brazil are used to comply with some Northern Hemisphere habits like Santa Klaus stories, Christmas here is like Christmas in Miami: we don't have snow and don't feel like freezing on the streets, but poor people are everywhere, so Charles Dickens's Scrooge is a good story here too, and if our poor people don't die freezing at Christmas, they sometime freeze while people at Northern Hemisphere are undergoing Summer, which is July around here.
Anyway, that was only an introduction. Yesterday I was washing my car, approximately at noon, while someone called me from the street. I live in a big city (Curitiba has about 3 million inhabitants.) My neighborhood is a rather calm place, but many beggars use to pass in front of my home on their way. Nearby there are many, a lot, really many poor people living in wood boxes which they call 'home.' Sometimes they don't have anything to eat and nothing to dress - this is why many of them die when winter comes, although we make several campaigns to get used clothes, food and some money to help them survive. Brazil is a country politically dominated by corruption and our social programs are not doing well; we are about 170 million people, but more than 100 million are starving and our government doesn't even worry about it. For what is worth, this is the abridged truth. Now back to our history.
I was boarded by this beggar. He was evidently a miserable person and he asked me to give him some money for the bus, so he could go to his home which would be about 5 miles away. I looked him thoroughly and noticed that his hands were shaky; we was dressing these rather rotten clothes, and he carried two plastic bags with some fruits and rests of food, which he claimed to be food that he bought at a fair nearby. Also, he said to me that he used to be a truck driver years ago and lost 22 teeth on an accident. But I am a psychologist and in Brazil I treated people from all economic and social classes, so I am used to understand when people are standing in front of me with what would be 100% truth and what would carry about 10% of truth from the factual viewpoint. Also, I understand that everyone has an internal truth which is usually much more respectable than any other truth: what that man was telling me, apart from his own awareness of its symbolism, was that he was no longer able to conduct his own life - since he couldn't drive anymore.
I then thought to myself - and I was selfish at that time: "Well, here is an opportunity to do some good to someone at Christmas time." And I thought how good I would look to myself doing good to that man. I am used to attend many people, but I do that in a psychological way. I didn't have the intention to give money to that man, since I knew he could spend it with alcohol - he looked everything but a non-alcoholic person - and I looked at his scars on his feet. He really had that problem to walk, but it was rather from being ill walking and begging while taking money for more booze, and I felt that there should be another way to relate to him (I have plenty of related stories to tell, this is only a chapter happening at Christmas.)
I told him, "I don't have money right now, but would you consider having lunch?" He accepted and I went inside the house and prepared a meal for him. I gave him his lunch and some water, which he gratefully drank, but I still didn't feel I did what I should for that man, so I asked if he would like to have an ambulance taking him home. We have that service in this city, it takes drunk beggars to resting places where they can heal from their alcoholic syndromes. For a start he accepted, and I went to the phone to call for the ambulance. Unfortunately this town have this service, but to get to it we have many steps to fulfill, so I had to call one and other service and I eventually got impatient, thinking that our governments' bureaucracy is really something, and I cried out loud, shouting, that I am always amazed with that most inefficient behavior from local authorities, and so on.
Then my mother, who lives at home, asked to do that phone service while I was attending the man, and I went back to the outside, where I left him resting by the door, and what was my surprise, he wasn't there. In fact he wasn't anywhere, I looked around, he left like he had never been there.
Then I remembered that the man had a resemblance with some figure who did seem like someone I knew. He had this all-white hair, all-white long beard, blue eyes, almost green, with a very white skin reddened from sunlight. If he was all dressed in red, without his trembling and uncertain movements, maybe he would seem just like... Santa Klaus!
And I thought that people really forget to think that some things are much more important than work, money or anything else. People and nature, quality words and arms who reach for another person to be friendly arms and not aggressive ones; we have Christmas just to let us remember those simple things in life which, once pursued, should lead us to happiness. But we usually don't; with few exceptions, people are not used to think that quality in life is not only living with many, but leaving many things to live well, being able to classify our priorities.
He appeared from nothing and most certainly left when he heard me shouting from the inside. He probably thought (this is only my need for an explanation talking) that I was nervous and mad because of him, while I was mad not at himself, but for himself. There was another thing: some fabric I was using to wash my car, he took it. Would that be a reason for him to run away? I don't know, but we never know what happens inside other people's minds, so I have to accept the fact that he was just there, from my point of view, to let me remember that sometimes we carry Christmas with us, in our thoughts.
My neighbor told me that man is always around, begging for money. I had never seen him before - I spent too much time working and I don't stay at home too much, so I really don't know many people around here. But for me, it happened at Christmas time.
Maybe he WAS Santa Klaus, who turned to be a beggar after the Grinch made so much success. Maybe the Grinch stole everything from him and then he turned out to beg while he was here in Brazil, I don't know. Anyway, may you all have a Merry Christmas. And a Happy New Year.
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Epinions.com ID:
danwood
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Member: Daniel Wood
Location: Curitiba, Parana, Brazil
Reviews written: 34
Trusted by: 13 members
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