by Irene Lynxleg
Because of the great distances between communities in rural western Manitoba, our priest couldn’t attend each village for Midnight Mass. I remember when I was 10 years old it was his turn to come to our village.
That evening we got ready and dressed warm with our home made clothes, woolen coats, hats and mittens and brought wool blankets to cover and keep us warm for the sleigh ride to church.
The church with the little white steeple was the tallest building in the community. The steeple pointing to the sky looked like a lonely unicorn sitting on the snow waiting for company.
It was four miles from our farm; too far to walk. My dad and brothers hitched our two plough farm horses to the sleigh and attached bells to the harness. The sleigh had an open box with seats all around except on the front, where a large plank provided a seat for the driver.
As they trotted pulling the sleigh their breath sent out streams of air like the old locomotives trains. Their tails swung and danced to the rhythm of the swinging bells which could be heard for miles, especially on a cold crisp winter night.
My oldest brother was the driver that night and Mom sat beside him. My Dad did not attend the service. His church was the woods where he would go alone to talk to his Creator.
On the trip we talked, laughed, sang and teased each other to make up for having to be silent during the service. When we arrived we tied up the horses and fed them and brought in our blankets to line the cold church pews. The wooden stove was too small and did not heat the whole church.
When we entered most of the people were already seated. Each family occupied one whole row of the church benches. The parents allowed their children to bring their home-made toys: sling shots, drums, flutes, little dolls dressed in leather and feathers. For snacks we brought dried strips of meat moose, deer, rabbit and bannock packed in empty metal Shamrock lard pails.
The Midnight Mass in my native community was a special Christmas event. The parents socialized after the service and the little children fed Baby Jesus their snacks. During confession time, the grandmas and mothers sang native hymns in the upstairs balcony.
They were called the Crepe Paper Singers because they could not afford to buy lipstick. The women used the red crepe paper that was used for Christmas decorations that was kept hidden behind the old organ in the church. They wet the red paper with their saliva, then applied it to their lips to transfer the deep red dye. I still remember one of the hymns the Crepe Paper Singers sang called ‘Jesus Has Arrived’ (in Saulteaux it’s ‘Aja A Binogee Jesus’). I used to sing it at Christmas for my grandchildren.
After the service we wished everyone a Merry Christmas, climbed into the sleigh for the ride home. As we rode along in silence I noticed it was very light out. I looked up at the sky and saw the evening star Venus, also called the Star of Bethlehem or the Christmas Star.
Opposite the Christmas Star a beautiful golden full Moon glowed. The moonlight lit up the snow-covered ground, and the crusted snow flakes were wearing sparkling diamond tiaras.
When we reached home, before we entered the house we smelt the aroma of cooking. Our father surprised us with a special midnight late dinner. On the table, instead of a turkey was a roasted beaver and from our root cellar he cooked onions, potatoes, carrots and turnips. We thanked the Creator for our wonderful evening and meal and quietly went to bed.
Now every Christmas when I see cards, churches with steeples, horses pulling sleighs and jewelers advertising diamonds, the sparkling snow wearing diamond tiaras, I think of my sleigh ride in the moonlight and my roasted beaver dinner.
If You Go:
Things to do in Winnipeg, Manitoba during Christmas holidays
About the author:
Irene Lynxleg was born on an Indian Reservation 77 years ago in Southern Manitoba (Tootenowazubeng). She was the only child on the reservation to complete Grade 8 but was subsequently sent to a Catholic Residential School. She lived most of her life off the reservation. She has been writing seriously with guidance from the Brock House Society for about 3 years. In 2015, Irene received the Cedric Literary award for First Nation’s writing.
Photo of horse and sleigh byPete Markham from Loretto, USA / CC BY-SA
There are many good reasons to go to Cancún: a long, relaxing break from a stressful job, a way of visiting other cities in Quintana Roo and Yucatán like Tulúm or Mérida, a chance to 
There is one big clue, though: the pyramid at San Miguelito.
Curiously, this temple faces away from the other stone buildings at San Miguelito. Instead, it faces El Rey. Between the pyramid and El Rey, there may have been an uninterrupted stretch of houses and other structures. Unfortunately, “low level houses were not registered during the design and construction phase of the hotel zone during the seventies,” according to a National Institute of History and Anthropology (INAH) placard at San Miguelito.
Today, the ruins of El Rey are at kilometer 18, across the street (and yes past the golf course; try to keep your snickering and cynical commentary to yourself for a moment).
Most of these buildings as we see them date to the Postclassical era, but like most Maya structures, they were built in phases. The costa oriental temple had at least two construction phases. The pyramid at San Miguelito had at least three.
“It looks like a place where the dinosaurs once roamed frozen in a time capsule of volcanic rock,” I gasp.
Harry continues driving along the route made famous in John Ford’s classic film Stagecoach (1939) through an eerie, snow-dusted landscape of gouged, red-brown hills and gullies cradled by massive buttes. It’s as if nothing has changed since that time. There are no paved roads, power lines, restaurants or public restrooms — just a few scattered Navajo hogans veiled in gray mist. But everything, including the Navajo’s traditional way of life, is changing.
Navajo elders remember snows from the 1940s that were chest high on horses. They mention grass so thick and tall that sheep could get lost in it and soil that stayed damp through spring. It was a world they understood and identified with, but weather patterns now are extreme and unpredictable with no seasonal order. “The wind today is different,” says Janis Perry. “It is upset with us. You can see it in our sheep. They are constantly fatigued.”
All of this eludes me in winter’s cocoon at an elevation of 5,200’. In the afternoon light, the red-rock spires and mesas, sculpted in such a cacophony of shapes, rise above the dust-laden emptiness. They stand alone, as if haunted. North of Totem Pole, the wind hurls sand through twisted juniper trees and across the dusty road, gullies, dunes and knolls of fractured rock. As the sun fades, the horizon of misshapen rock formations looks eerily beautiful in the whirling wind.
To the Navajo, Monument Valley, the first tribal park in the United States, is more than a park or nature preserve. It is one of the spiritual centers of their ancestral homeland, a living link to their culture and identity, quite separate from Ford’s mythic Westerns. Some visitors are drawn by the landscapes they remember from his movies, but Navajo guides instead share stories about the Holy Ones, healing ceremonies, rock art and their clans.
“Monument Valley has an unusual power that anchors us,” Garry explains. “There is an inner harmony, beauty and peace. Navajo and non-Navajo, who come here, have been healed emotionally and physically. In our history, no invaders could come in and conquer it.” This included the brutal ‘Long Walk’ of 1863-1864 when the U.S. army under Colonel Kit Carson invaded and forcefully relocated thousands of Navajo people to a New Mexico wasteland called Bosque Redondo. Many of those who escaped capture found refuge in the valley.
With its hidden burial sites and surreal rock formations infused with gods and spirits and the Navajo presence, Monument Valley is unlike any other place that I have visited. This becomes clear to me later when Harry, Dick and I drive to Ear of the Wind, a tunnel-like vaulted rock arch that opens up to the sky, where echoes from the wind can be heard. In my mind, it resembles a cave where a giant once stayed to watch his kingdom.
Then a long sonorous cry pierces the silence. Maybe fifty or sixty feet away, we see a young Navajo chanter sitting on a rock ledge. He breathes deeply and then leaning forward, rocks his body back and forth as his high-pitched voice echoes off the canyon walls.
Vizcaya was designed with an open central courtyard, surrounded by four towers. Although the exterior duplicates 18th century Italian architecture, the building was constructed with 20th century techniques to adapt to Miami’s subtropical climate. Deering was a trained engineer and insisted on a concrete structure with steel-enforced floors to combat humidity, decay, and termites. He included modern features such as an elevator, telephones, and an “annunciator” to beckon servants from anywhere in the house.
Deering was a renowned and extravagant host. His many guests included actress Lilian Gish, Henry Ford, and President Warren G. Harding. He placed a concrete barge in the bay and used gondolas or motor boats to transport guests for tea and cocktails. He also arranged for concerts and fireworks from the barge, and guests would watch from the shore. Originally, in true Venetian manner, the barge and gardens were accessed by canals. Deering would guide visitors through the canals, ending at the barge or the nearby gazebo.
Deering also wanted formal European gardens, adapted to the Florida climate and flora. The garden design included Deering’s favorite flower, orchids, with 2,000 specimens placed throughout the estate, and now in the new David A. Klein Orchidarium. The gardens were completed in 1923. Deering would only live for two more years to enjoy his magnificent estate. Suffering from pernicious anemia for years, he died on a steamship returning from Paris in 1925.
Statues of saints seemed more out of place than the skeletons because this was no church. Then there were the voodoo dolls. Voodoo practitioners believe that voodoo dolls don’t just represent someone but actually become that person when a personal item such as a lock of hair or fingernails is added.
Our education continued when our tour guide reported that New Orleans voodoo is synonymous with voodoo queen Marie Laveau (1793-1882), whom he referred to as a free woman of color. NU’awlons pointed up at her picture on the wall as we left the museum to begin the walking tour. She was at the height of her power/influence in the 1850s. Although she was not psychic she had built up that reputation by collecting gossip when she visited various houses in the French Quarter to braid women’s hair.
Our first stop was the St. Louis Cathedral but not to visit the interior. Instead we walked outside to the rear of the building where we found a small garden fenced off from the public. Peering through the wrought iron fence we saw a statue of Christ with raised arms. Marie Laveau was a member of this church congregation and she was known to perform voodoo rituals in this garden.
We crossed Basin Street and entered the neighborhood of Treme to visit Congo Square in Louis Armstrong Park. Creole slave owners strictly enforced the practice of Catholicism but the slaves circumvented this by gathering at Congo Square each Sunday (their one day off during the week under the Code Noire) to sing and gyrate to the rhythm of drum beats. They also participated in voodoo rituals.
After you find your inner beat, leave Congo Square and visit the nearby Our Lady of Guadalupe Chapel. This church boasts a number of local voodoo practitioners among its congregation but you likely will not be able to identify them because they look just like anybody else.
Exit the Chapel and proceed to St. Louis Cemetery #1. The living is admitted free but the families of the dead must pay to maintain the upkeep of all the above-ground tombs that surround you. The French had a custom of interring people above ground because they did not want to have buried coffins rising to the surface and falling open because of the high water table and flooding for which the Crescent City is famous. With a little imagination you have the making of a good horror movie where the zombies rise from the open coffins in search of the living.
About the author:
