Christmas Eve in Sevilla

We hope all who are reading this had a wonderful Christmas and Christmas Eve. Ours has been a Christmas like no other we´ve had, and one we will not soon forget.

It was a solid 2 days here in the amazing city of Sevilla before I had a moment to sit and write in my journal, let alone get access to and write in th¡s blog, and that in itself is very telling. In the same way my first trip to San Francisco of last spring was enlightening, in that I can understand why so many people from around the world claim it as their favorite city in the world, I now understand as well the hold that Sevilla puts on those who visit here. This is a city like no other I´ve visited, and I find myself not wanting to leave, longing for it already, even though I am still here. It´s odd and sort of ridiculous, but I guess that´s a product of our impending departure, of my knowing that our time here is very short.

The people here have an obvious--overwhelming, even--appreciation for the living of life, for the squeezing of pleasure out of all parts of the day. We are staying in El Centro, the center of the old city, where the streets are narrow and cobbled and there are restaurants and cafes and tapas bars (glorious, wonderful tapas bars) pretty much everywhere. We walk and we walk and we walk and still we look around us in amazement and joy.

On Christmas Eve, our first full day here, we took in the streets of our neighborhood and the adjoining Barrio de Santa Cruz. They eat and drink all day here--all day and all night--and we did as much keepng up as we could. The thing is, for the holidays, the hours of operation have been a bit off, and we found ourselves tired and hungry late into the night, as the locals for once spent the evening at home. We've since gotten onto the right schedule, though, and now all is well.

The churches here, of which there are so many it´s mind-boggling, opened to tourists for Christmas Eve services, and Cathy and I popped into a few in search of something glorious, with mixed results. The churches we went into were themselves awe-inspiring pieces of architecture, cavernous rooms with series of arches and altars and paintings and statues and gilded everything that seemed every one to be the work of ages and multitudes. Gorgeous structures testifying to the depth of commitment to religion and God in this city. But the services--well, we'll just say that I have experienced far more rousing hours of sermon and song in little wooden A-frame churches in the cornfields of suburban Illinois. Weird to experience the going-through of the motions in these places, to sense a lack of inspiration bred from familiarity in these buildings where I, no frequent participator in rituals myself, felt such amazement. But, also comforting to know that the sentiment comes not from the finery and the grandiosity, but from the hearts of those involved. Nothing against these people and their worship, to be sure, just the observation that a mass is a mass is a mass.

At midnight, we entered the main cathedral of the city, one of the largest structures of its kind in the world. Christopher Columbus´sepulcher is inside--his remains, as far as anyone knows (though no one is 100% sure) inside, having been brought back from Cuba around 1899 or so. Kings and queens and bishops and all other important folk are buried beneath the main floor, and they have a pipe organ that´s as big as a small apartment building inside. Just gigantic, and the sound it made was impressive indeed. We ended the night after this, tired from walking and looking forward to the next day.

That was Chrismtas Eve. Christmas would be very different.