I never had Santa Claus
Nor a Christmas tree
But nothing made me feel out of place…
-Carlos Varela
By Mario Luis Reyes (El Estornudo)
HAVANA TIMES – Miriam is 85 years old, born in the late 1930s. She tells me that before the triumph of the Revolution in 1959, Christmas Eve was not celebrated at home because her father, an immigrant who arrived by ship from Spain seeking a better future in Havana, always worked that day.
Nevertheless, Miriam recalls that “before the Revolution, Christmas in Cuba was a true popular celebration, greatly enhanced by commerce.” She says that if she tries to remember, she can still picture stores filled with turrones, cider, hazelnuts, and walnuts from Spain.
“It was a very pagan celebration in the sense that, although it was essentially religious, that aspect was overshadowed by popular festivities, fueled by store decorations, festive streets, and advertisements on TV and radio. Everything revolved around that great celebration,” she tells me. “I saw many people celebrating enthusiastically, while others, with less money, celebrated as they could. But overall, it was a peoples’ festivity. Even the very poor celebrated in their own way.”
When dictator Fulgencio Batista fled in the early hours of January 1, 1959, few imagined the sweeping changes ahead for the country. As this happened, Cubans were celebrating the New Year as per tradition—with rum, meat, music, Christmas trees, nuts, and turron.
Things started to get difficult afterward. By 1963 or 1964, tensions between Fidel Castro and the Catholic Church had intensified significantly. While many religious figures had supported the fight against Batista’s dictatorship, the gradual establishment of a communist regime created irreconcilable differences. This, combined with shortages and the whirlwind of the Revolution itself, made it “very difficult for those celebrations to continue,” says Miriam.
As communists occupied key positions in government and the armed forces, the Church increased its opposition to the state, declaring the regime incompatible with Catholic faith. The government responded with growing hostility, including closing Catholic media outlets and mass arrests of clergy, nuns, and laypeople.
The government confiscated religious schools and universities, banned traditional processions like that of Our Lady of Charity of El Cobre, and expelled hundreds of priests and nuns. By 1965, numerous Catholics were sent to Military Units to Aid Production (UMAP), which were essentially forced labor camps for “reeducation.”
Despite the conflict with the Church, Fidel Castro initially showed a favorable stance toward Christmas. In 1962, he promised that “every Cuban family would have a Jijona nougat for the celebration,” ordering a massive shipment from Alicante, Spain. According to writer Leonardo Padura, this overwhelmed production facilities in that Spanish region.
Stores in Cuba’s major cities still sold Christmas decorations, turrones, and trees during these years. Special holiday deals were offered, and men dressed as Santa Claus entertained shoppers.
However, on January 2, 1969, when Castro entered his eleventh year in power, Granma, the official Communist Party newspaper, announced the suspension of Christmas festivities, citing the importance of December for sugar production during the “Ten Million Ton Harvest” campaign.
Christmas was never formally banned, but Granma’s announcement effectively canceled it for over 25 years. Meanwhile, July 26, the anniversary of the Moncada Barracks assault, was declared a holiday. Some foreign media interpreted this as moving Christmas to July, but it didn’t work.
Though the tradition faded or diluted over the years, many people, especially Catholics, continued celebrating quietly, almost clandestinely, at the risk of being labeled as having “ideological weaknesses” and consequently being denied job opportunities or access to higher education.
“Christmas became tinged with fear,” Miriam recounts. “For years, even saying ‘Merry Christmas’ felt almost sinful. There was no explicit order, but there was a sense that it wasn’t good, that it was forbidden, that even wishing someone a happy holiday was negative.”
Then, the Pope visited in 1997 and requested that December 25 be declared a public holiday. “Fidel agreed,” Miriam recalls. “Before that, people worked that day. Only in the countryside did people roast pigs, while the cities were completely dark. It wasn’t until 1998, when the 25th became a holiday, that things opened up a little more. Saying ‘Merry Christmas’ was no longer taboo.”
Nowadays, restrictions don’t come from the Communist Party or the “leader of the Revolution” but from the emptiness in people’s pockets—and perhaps their spirits.
“In today’s situation, religious people celebrate by going to Midnight Mass or having Christmas Eve dinner; some with more means, others with less, as always,” Miriam says. “But possibilities for most are very limited. Prices are extremely high: a turrón costs over a thousand pesos. Everyone tries to spend the holiday with family, but family separation is a harsh reality. All these factors converge into a celebration that, in Cuba, is now a somber affair.”
In 2024, the average salary in Cuba is approximately 4,700 CUP (Cuban Pesos), while the minimum wage remains at 2,100 CUP, a figure far below the current cost of living. The situation is even worse for retirees, whose pensions range from 1,528 to 1,733 CUP. [For reference the USD is currently at 300 pesos to one USD].
To understand how insignificant these wages are, one only needs to compare them with the prices of some essential foods. For example, pork, a staple in Cuban celebrations, costs between 1,100 and 1,300 CUP per pound for meat, while a leg of pork ranges from 780 to 800 CUP.
Congrí, another traditional dish, is also unaffordable for many families due to the cost of local rice (200 CUP per pound) and black or red beans (up to 450 CUP per pound).
Chicken, once considered a cheaper alternative, has also become prohibitively expensive. A 2.5-kilogram package costs around 5,200 CUP, and chicken breasts exceed 5,000 CUP per kilogram. Even eggs, once a relatively affordable option, are now sold at 3,300 CUP per carton (30 eggs).
Vegetables and root crops are similarly expensive: malanga costs between 120 and 150 CUP per pound, sweet potato is priced at 52.50 CUP, and cassava at 45 CUP. In terms of agricultural production, the situation is dire. In 2023, Cuba produced only 27,900 tons of rice, far below the 700,000 tons needed for annual national consumption. Root crop production also declined significantly.
This production downturn occurred while the government invested up to 15 times more in tourism than in agriculture during the first half of 2024.
Additionally, the food industry faced severe limitations due to fuel shortages, receiving only 48% of the planned allocation for the year. Of the amount budgeted for raw materials, maintenance, and production, only 9% of what was planned were provided.
Food production has reached such critical levels that it is now below the worst moments of the “Special Period” (1990s post-Soviet crisis) and represents just 20.4% of the physical production volume achieved in 1990.
Isabel’s Christmas plans
Isabel moved to Havana with her husband at the end of the previous decade, fueled by the hope of improved US-Cuba relations, which promised economic prosperity linked to tourism and cruise ships. Since arriving in Marianao, where they initially rented and later bought a house, neither Isabel nor her husband has stopped working a single day.
She took several days to respond to my questions about her plans for Christmas Eve, and when she finally did, she began with an apology, saying she’s barely had time to think about it.
“This 24th… you can’t really make many plans here, but my husband and I are thinking of going to Placetas, Villa Clara; you know we’re from there,” she tells me.
“After much effort, we managed to get two tickets for that very day, the 24th. God willing, we’ll arrive around noon, and in the afternoon, we’ll try to have a meal with my son and grandson,” Isabel continues. She doesn’t mention how hard it was to secure a bus ticket amidst a nearly non-existent transport system, nor the difficulty of getting to Havana’s bus terminal from Marianao with her bags, nor the cost of it all—the tickets, the luggage fees, the taxi fare.
What Isabel does talk about, being a housewife as well as a street vendor, is the Christmas Eve meal. She tells me it will depend on the main dish: “Because the prices for the main dish, like everything else, have gone up ten or fifteen times—ridiculously.” Instead of the traditional pork, she says they’ll likely prepare chicken, which is “cheaper and more accessible for us.” She adds, “A meal with my son and grandson, as a family, as best as possible… just being together.”
When I ask if she’s been able to buy the chicken, she replies, “Mario, this is something you have to live to understand. What we’re going through, you have to experience it yourself. No matter how much we try to explain, you have to feel it in your own skin to understand.”
She then tells me that they’re eating whatever they can find, “whatever is cheapest, because we have no other choice.”
“If you don’t have a business or a relative abroad sending help, it gets harder every day to buy food because prices keep going up and up, while wages stay the same. It’s very hard to earn enough money to buy food. Drinks? Forget about it. The cheapest bottle of rum costs over a thousand pesos, and pork is 1,300 pesos per pound. A Cuban without extra income or help can’t buy pork. We can’t buy pork. Every day gets harder and harder, and we’re people who work for our money; we’re not lazy. But the math just doesn’t add up.”
When I change the topic and ask what Christmas means to her, she responds, “For Catholics like me, it’s a reason for joy and celebration, a celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ. But, well, we don’t really feel much joy here. That day, yes, but otherwise, not really.”
When I ask how Christmas celebrations have changed for her over the past five years, she doesn’t hesitate to answer: “Each year is worse.” She lacks the resources because “celebrating means buying food and drinks, and that’s the most expensive thing we have in this country.”
After a brief pause, she adds, “The celebrations are very difficult for us. A family meal can become so costly that you end up only celebrating with your closest family members. Father, mother, son, grandson, and daughter-in-law. That’s it. The family circle keeps shrinking each year because the more people you gather, the higher the cost. We’ve even reduced the number of family members we celebrate with.”
Despite the Communist Party’s attempt to enforce ideological homogeneity, Cuba remains a diverse country without a dominant majority—be it atheist, Catholic, Yoruba, Protestant, Communist, or anti-Communist. Yet one recurring sentiment unites the people I spoke to: the desire to leave Cuba.
“My Christmas dream is in a country that’s not here,” Isabel tells me, “because here, we’ve never had a real Christmas, and we’re going to have it even less each year. My dream of Christmas… I don’t see it in this country. I see it in a country where food is within my reach, where I can work and buy food with my salary to celebrate with a dinner. That doesn’t happen here. It has to be another country. Also, the Christmas spirit is about joy, and, Mario, there’s no joy here. Forgive me, but we’re never going to have Christmas in this country because we’ve already lost our joy. We’ve lost hope because we don’t see anything. It’s hard to say, but it’s the truth.”
When Christmas began to return
At the beginning of the 1990s, with the Berlin Wall fallen and the USSR collapsing, Cuba’s economy began to crumble, forcing Fidel Castro to reverse many policies. One such shift involved lifting the ban on religion.
In October 1991, during the second day of the IV Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba, Castro allowed religious practitioners to join the Party, leading Cubans to slowly retrieve their Nativity scenes and Christmas trees from storage.
By 1995, the Communist Party still restricted the display of Christmas trees in public spaces, limiting them to tourist areas. However, the situation changed in November 1996 when Fidel Castro met Pope John Paul II at the Vatican, marking the start of a symbolic thaw with the Catholic Church.
Upon his return, Castro arranged for the Pope to visit the island, stating that he should be treated like a king. In December 1997, one month before the scheduled visit, the Cuban government declared Christmas a holiday “exceptionally” that year. Fidel promised the Pope would return to the Vatican with the impression of having made the “best visit he had ever undertaken.”
The Christmas celebration of 1997 was a unique event after almost 28 years of official absence. Although there were efforts to revive traditions, many Cubans faced the harsh economic realities of the “Special Period.” Few could afford to buy decorations or Christmas trees, and the stark contrast between stores decorated for tourists and the austerity in Cuban homes was evident.
The Pope’s visit in January 1998 marked a turning point in relations between the Cuban government and the Catholic Church. His presence reinforced the Church’s role in public life and led to significant progress, such as allowing foreign priests to work in Cuba. By December 1998, the Communist Party established December 25 as a permanent holiday, recognizing its importance for believers and non-believers alike.
Although Christmas began regaining ground in Cuban society, it was never quite the same. An entire generation had grown up without the tradition, and the ongoing economic crisis kept celebrations modest.
A critical 2024
Cuba’s economy in 2024 has been dire, and prospects for 2025 look equally bleak. The Cuban government projected a 1% GDP growth for the coming year, but the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) forecasts a 0.1% contraction.
Recent trends suggest that official projections are unreliable. In 2023, despite an estimated 2-3% growth, GDP fell by 1.9%. This year, authorities expected 2% growth but have already ruled out any economic expansion.
ECLAC predicts that Cuba, alongside Argentina (-3.2%) and Haiti (-4%), will be among the three Latin American economies to shrink in 2024. Cuba and Haiti are also the only countries in the region to experience three consecutive years of economic contraction.
Tourism, traditionally one of Cuba’s main revenue sources, continued its decline. The island received 2.2 million visitors in 2024, slightly below the 2.4 million of 2023 and far from the 3.5 million projected by the government.
Despite this, nearly 40% of state investments went into tourism, including hotels, restaurants, and related services. This marked a 112.1% increase from 2023. Yet, Cuba remains, according to the consultancy ForwardKeys, the Caribbean country with the poorest tourism recovery, in stark contrast to destinations like the Dominican Republic, which surpassed 10 million visitors.
Natural disasters also marked 2024. Cuba endured Hurricanes Oscar and Rafael, which affected provinces like Guantánamo, Artemisa, Havana, and Mayabeque. In November, two earthquakes with magnitudes of 6.0 and 6.7 struck Pilon, Granma, caused significant damage.
The energy crisis further defined the year. On December 19, an electricity deficit left 53% of the country without power. Since August, fuel shortages and failing thermoelectric plants—many over 40 years old—have caused three nationwide blackouts, with recovery taking up to five days. These frequent outages disrupted both the population and state operations, paralyzing economic activities and amplifying social unrest.
The power outages and the exodus
Blackouts not only come with a high economic cost but also significantly contribute to a climate of unrest, reflected in the unprecedented wave of migration and frequent protests. These include the demonstrations on July 11, 2021, those in Nuevitas and Havana in 2022, and the ones in Santiago de Cuba on March 17 of this year. Social discontent was evident in a total of 7,683 protests recorded through November 2024 by the Cuban Observatory of Conflicts.
Meanwhile, the NGO Prisoners Defenders reported that, as of the end of November, there were 1,062 political prisoners on the island. Gender violence observatories registered 55 femicides during the same period.
In sports, the Paris 2024 Olympic Games mirrored the country’s situation. The Cuban delegation earned nine medals: two gold, one silver, and six bronze, placing 32nd in the overall medal tally. This result marks the fewest medals won by the island since 1972 and the poorest performance in gold medals since 1968.
However, the migration figures are the most striking: in 2024, more than 217,000 Cubans entered the United States, bringing the total number of Cuban migrants there to over 850,000 since October 2021. Many others have moved to Spain, Mexico, or Russia, but no official figures are available.
This exodus has led to a drastic decline in the island’s population, which has dropped below ten million inhabitants, according to official statistics. However, Cuban economist and demographer Juan Carlos Albizu-Campos estimates the current real population to be only 8.62 million.
A conversation about dreams
A few days before December 24, I ask Alejandro, a 54-year-old Cuban laborer, currently working on their false roof, about his Christmas plans. “I’ll spend the 24th at home with my daughter and mother,” he says. “It won’t be a celebration, just our usual Christmas Eve dinner, without any talk of religion—like most Cubans.”
When I ask if he had difficulty obtaining food or drinks for the occasion, he replies, “Not really,” then pauses before adding, “I manage because I work and can at least buy the basic necessities.”
I ask what Christmas means to him. “It’s just what I said earlier. I was raised in the belief of communism, not Christianity, like most people born after 1959. Fidel banned all religion, including Christian celebrations. That only changed when the Pope visited for the first time.”
Perhaps because he has lived in such an austere and restricted environment, when I ask him if his Christmas celebrations have changed in recent years, he tells me no, that every year it is “more or less the same.” I am left wondering if that is good or bad.
Finally, I ask about his dream Christmas. His response surprises me: “I’d like to see my daughter celebrate Christmas the way it should be celebrated, in another country, where it’s possible.”
Alejandro’s dream doesn’t include himself or even Cuba. It’s about his daughter and a foreign land he’s never seen. Once again, he leaves me pensive.
First published in Spanish by El Estornudo and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.
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