Christmas Eve 2021 arrived in Haiti at the end of what had been, by any measure, one of the worst years in the country’s modern history. The assassination of the president, the earthquake, the tropical storm, the fuel blockade, the intensifying gang violence, and the continuing pandemic had created a year of compounding trauma that had pushed the country to the edge of what any society could endure.
Yet Haitians gathered for Christmas as they always had, because that is what Haitians do. In neighborhoods where gunshots were sometimes heard at night, families decorated what homes they had. In earthquake-affected communities in the south, people celebrated in spaces that were partially rebuilt or still temporary. In displacement sites, communities that had lost everything found ways to mark the occasion with the resources they had.
Churches that had not been destroyed in the earthquake or abandoned due to gang violence held midnight masses that drew the faithful who needed the comfort of communal prayer and the promise of something beyond the catastrophes of the year that was ending. Pastors and priests who had themselves been through devastating experiences in 2021 found words of pastoral care for congregations that had suffered alongside them.
For the Haitian diaspora watching from Miami, New York, Montreal, and Paris, the images and messages from home at Christmas were a reminder of a resilience that defied easy explanation. How a people could have been through what Haitians had been through in 2021 and still light candles, still sing, still embrace their children, still look toward January with any hope at all — that resilience was itself, perhaps, the most important thing to understand about Haiti and its people.