so the story starts.
Once upon a time, about three days before Christmas, on a dark, cold night, somewhere in the North:
A group of men passing the plaza of the little village, stopping at the local church, taking out of their pockets cans of spray paint and swiftly writing on the wall: “Foreigners go home!!!”, then a noise of breaking glass. The gang disappeared quickly and a ghostly silence filled the air. The curtains were closed quickly and nobody had seen anything.
“Move, get up! I’m fed up now, let’s go!” – “To where? What are you gonna do there, down in the South?” – “Down in the South? That’s our home. It’s getting colder here and it’s getting worse! Let’s do what they wrote on the wall: FOREIGNERS GO HOME!”
And indeed, in the midst of the night things started to move in the village. The doors of the shops opened up: The first ones to come out were the cacao packages, followed by the chocolates and toffees in their Christmas wrappers. They wanted to return to Ghana and West-Africa, their original home. Then the coffee went out of the shop by pallets and headed for their home Uganda, Kenya and Latin America.
Pineapples and bananas left their boxes and so did the grapes from South Africa and New Zealand. Almost all Christmas delicatessen moved out: pepper nut, almond and cardamom biscuits – they all went back to India and Indonesia.
The morning twilight came on as the flowers headed off on charter planes to Columbia, followed by gold and diamonds in many other directions.
Long queues of Japanese, Korean and Czech cars, filled with optics and entertainment equipment, moved to the East. The air was filled with Christmas geese and turkeys, flying back to Poland, followed by silk shirts and oriental carpets.
Loud noises came from the woodwork of windows, doors, living rooms, offices that was wrenching it self out. And all headed for the Amazon area.
The roads became slippery as petrol, gasoline and oil submerged from tanks. What started as a stream became a big river going South.
Cars started to disintegrate into their components: aluminium went off to Japan, Copper to Somalia, much of the steel to Brazil, rubber to Zaire…
The frantic evacuation lasted for 3 days; then all became quiet as the exodus came to an end. No foreign part was left in the area; only Christmas trees, apples and some nuts. One could still sing “Holy Night”, but only with special permission as the origin of the song was not local.
Only something didn’t fit into the picture: Mary and Joseph and the Child were still there… Three foreigners … from the Middle East!!!
“Especially we will stay!” Mary firmly said, “If we follow the others and leave, who is then showing them here the way, the way to Humanity, to Love?”
Merry Christmas!
Story translated from “Es war einmal…” by Werner Hoder.