Christmas 2020 arrived in Haiti carrying heavier burdens than any recent holiday season in memory. Families that had experienced income loss, illness, displacement, and insecurity throughout the year approached the celebration with significantly reduced means and with a grief and anxiety that could not be set aside even for Nowèl. Yet the celebration persisted, as it always had, because for Haitians the preservation of cultural tradition in difficult times is itself an act of resistance and hope.
Church attendance for midnight mass was modified to comply with COVID precautions, with some churches implementing capacity limits, mask requirements, and outdoor services for overflow congregations. The familiar carols and prayers provided a continuity with Christmases past that felt particularly precious in a year of disruption and loss.
The traditional Christmas meal — griot, pikliz, rice with black mushroom sauce — appeared on tables across the economic spectrum, though in more modest portions for families whose incomes had been reduced by the year’s economic shock. The ability to put a proper Christmas meal on the table for children was a point of dignity that parents across Haiti worked hard to maintain.
Diaspora remittances for the holiday season arrived in numbers that reflected both the love of absent family members and the desperation of conditions at home. For many Haitian families, the money sent from Miami, New York, or Montreal was what made any celebration possible at all. The holiday was a reminder of the bonds that distance and hardship could not break.