Christmas Message

The following is a fragment from Margret Wittmers book.

Now that holidays are around the corner, it is time to read this short text. May we have insights about how to live the holidays in the midst of a crisis.

The key: Rescue the true meaning of these holidays. www.floreana.ec

In 1959, Margret Wittmer published the first edition of her book "Postlagernd Floreana" (Floreana in English) The book was translated into 14 languages. It is the testimony of Margret's experience during the first years after the Wittmers arrived to Floreana: one remote island in the Galapagos Archipelago located 600 miles of the mainland in the Pacific Ocean.

Since their arrival in 1932, the Wittmer family set many cornerstones in the islands.... www.floreana.ec

Rolf Wittmer is the man whose birth is the first historically documented in Floreana.

The Wittmers are the oldest settlers on the island. Their entrepreneurship is the only one from that time that endures to this day.

Rolf is one of the pioneers of Eco‐ Tourism in the Galapagos Islands. He was awarded with the "National Tourism Symbol" in 2007. www.floreana.ec

This was going to be a really special Christmas. Perhaps we said that every year, but this year, alas, it had the 'special‐ness' of our uncertain future. We picked heaps of flowers, and spread them in vases all over the house, where their scent mingled with the delicious aroma of Christmas baking.

The summery weather still didn't fit into European conceptions of Christmas, but these were anyhow completely unfamiliar to Rolf and Inge. I once tried to tell them what snow meant, but at the end of my explanations, both in words and with elaborate gestures of hands and feet, she was clearly baffled still. You can't make a child of the tropics understand snow. www.floreana.ec

For Christmas Eve we had our traditional roast pork, and sat over the meal till sundown. When it was completely dark, we all went out of the house to light the brushwood bonfire Rolf and Inge had made. It blazed high and strong, and we all sang “Stille Nacht”. . www.floreana.ec

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It was truly a still and holy night, a peaceful night far from the world of war. In front of us blazed the fire. At our feet lay our farm, the work of our own hands and heads and endurance. Away to the left shone the vast and endless sea.

Above, in the dark sky, the stars twinkled brightly.

Slowly we went back to the house.

Heinz laid the children's presents under the tree. Very early in the morning I took some sweets and chocolate I had saved up, and put those too beneath the tree. I lighted the candles, and when all was ready, I rang a little bell. The children were awake and up, now they dashed out to the tree. I was longing to see Inge's face when she first caught sight of the doll, longing to hear her shouts of delight.

Nothing happened; in fact she looked anything but delighted.

'Don't you like your lovely doll?' I asked, very disappointed.

She shook her head, equally disappointed. www.floreana.ec

'Why can't Father Christmas bring me a machete’? she demanded. 'Or a hoe or a rake. I want to work in Rolf's garden. I can't do work with a doll.'

We were a little hurt that the doll which had been made with so much loving care and effort meant nothing to Inge, but that was one of the things parents had to accept.

The doll disappeared into a cupboard, and has remained there ever since—one of our failures or forgotten masterpieces, according to which way you look at it..

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I told Frances Conway about it in the afternoon when she and Elmer paid a Christmas visit, but she only laughed.

She did try to draw Inge out, however. 'I think it's a lovely doll, Inge, you ought to be very fond of her.'

Inge did not answer, except to give Aunt Frances an expressive sidelong look.

Then she vanished, to return a few minutes later holding a little raffia basket with some cheeping chickens in it straight out of the egg... www.floreana.ec

'Ve,' she said, gazing tenderly at the little yellow chicks, “esto es lindo” (this here is lovely). Why she said this in Spanish we never knew.

'She's a real island child, and always will be,' Frances comforted us. 'She'll never learn to play with dolls, because they're not living creatures. Those are what she likes.'

Frances was right too. Puppies, kittens, piglets, chickens, donkey foals, were always Inge's favourite playmates.. www.floreana.ec

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