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didn’t have the time or the skill to roast a pig in the backyard, a pig already cooked could be bought at the corner bodega, along with containers of
congrí
and yuca.
    Like the food, the faces in our family gathering hadn’t changed much. Our Miami Nochebuenas included many of the same relatives that had attended the gatherings in Cuba. Tío Mike always arrived early to set up what he called his “intellectual laboratory,” where he concocted mysterious martinis by looking up the proportions in one of his pocket notebooks. While Mike experimented, his wife, Mary, minced around in her gold high-heeled thongs with the furred straps. Tony, an uncle who had been a cabaret singer in Havana and was now a waiter in New York, crooned boleros accompanied by my sister on the guitar, while my father danced randy rumbas with any willing (and sometimes unwilling) partner. At some point during the evening, with eyes sparkling from a glass or two of
sidra,
my Castilian grandmother did her famous jota, which was followed by the ritual paso doble with my father.
    But even if we went to church, pigged out on roast pork, and drank and danced, these lively parties weren’t really clones of the Cuban Nochebuenas. Without anyone being overly aware of it, the Cuban Nochebuena and the American Christmas had started to get acquainted, to negotiate a compromise. Not only was Christmas sneaking up on Nochebuena; Nochebuena was converging on Christmas. Like my grandmother doing the jota next to the Christmas tree, Cuban customs had begun to marry American ways.
    On the face of it, the marriage was not an easy one. As an eager anticipation of the birth of Christ, Nochebuena has a high-strung, restive feel. Many Cubans spend the night in perpetual motion, going from one house to the next, a custom that supposedly goes back to the biblical story of Mary and Joseph wandering around Bethlehem looking for a place to spend the night. On the evening of December 24 we divide into two camps: the squatters and the roamers. The squatters stay put, cook, stock plenty of drinks, and keep their doors open. The roamers make the rounds. Since we were always squatters, part of the fun of Nochebuena was having people show up at our doorstep at any hour of the night, have a couple of drinks, eat, dance, and then move on to the next house. Needless to say, it’s safer to squat than to roam, but it’s the roamers who give the evening that extra burst of
embullo,
that extra hit of festive fuel.
    By contrast, the spirit of Christmas is neither raucous nor nomadic. As befits a family holiday, Christmas is merry but not moveable, joyful but not extravagant. Whereas Nochebuena is a nocturnal feast, Christmas is a daytime celebration, a holi
day
in the full sense of the word. If Nochebuena is all motion and commotion, Christmas is peace. On Christmas, families gather to exchange gifts and spend time together, not to hoot and howl. Children are a big part of Christmas, but during Nochebuena they are little more than a nuisance. Our Nochebuena photographs show bunches of grown-ups living it up; our Christmas photographs picture parents and children gathered around the tree. When Christmas encounters Nochebuena, Cuban nights run into American days.
    In our house the marriage of day and night occurred when my siblings and cousins and I grew up and began to have children of our own. By the midseventies and for several years thereafter we had achieved a rough balance between the “Cuban” and the “American” ends of the family. The older Cubans, mostly men like my father and my uncles, celebrated Nochebuena; their American-born grandchildren did the same for Christmas. As a member of the intermediate generation, I swung back and forth between one and the other, sometimes playing Cuban son to my father and at other times playing American dad to my son. During these balanced years, the prospect of Christmas morning made Nochebuena a little