My brother and I, a friend from Montreal, and other old and new friends spent Christmas 1987 on the beach at San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua.

The three of us exchanged gifts, each of us thereby receiving a shirt. There are only a few things you can give a fellow backpacker.

We slept under mosquito nets in a barn-like garage-come-hotel room for 50 cents each per night, ate fish and lobster and indulged ourselves in chocolate from the duty-free dollar shop. Chocolate is otherwise unobtainable in Nicaragua.

On Christmas Eve in San Juan del Sur, as in many other communities, the whole town is involved in a pageant as Mary and Joseph and their donkey make their way from house to house looking for shelter. At each stop, Joseph sings, “Let us in, the night is cold and my wife is about to give birth.”

The people inside the house sing their response in the negative. Then Mary (played, as is Joseph, by a teenage girl) sings, “My husband, let’s move on and maybe we will find someone who will show us some charity.”

A rinky-dink band strikes up a circus song, firecrackers go off and everyone shuffles on to the next house.

After the tour through town, we end up in front of the church where, lit by an electric generator and pulled by a pickup truck, a float with angels and cherubs is waiting for the Holy Couple and the ceramic Baby who somehow has been born.

The whole parade files into church for Midnight Mass, led by the band and its (to me) most unchurchlike music.

In his homily the priest reminds the people that the first to receive the good news of Jesus’ birth were shepherds, the poorest of the poor who didn’t even own land for their sheep to graze. As Mary and Joseph were in a similar economic plight, the first encounter of God to Humankind was of poor people to poor people, a clear message that the Good News of the Gospels is first and foremost for the poor.