Christmas in Honduras turned out to be a disappointment

Christmas here turned out to be a disappointment. We were told that Christmas Eve (“La Noche Buena”) would be very joyful but it seemed a very empty joy. All evening long hundreds and hundreds of youngsters shot off firecrackers, while older people went to parties to dance. The entire city smelled like gun smoke and it sounded like a war was going on. I wondered how Jesus must feel.

The next day a very strange phenomenon occurred. In many streets of the city all over the walls of the houses were large green locusts. (They are similar to grasshoppers, only bigger.) Never before had we seen even one of them, but now the city was full of them. We were told that they only come once a year, on December 25. The people have different theories-one that they are attracted by the noise of the firecrackers-but to me it seemed more like some sort of a curse because of the decadence or defilement of Christmas.