Dawn opened behind the door, and I stepped through it, shivering a little, not quite awake yet. By five I was ready. Alex, Fede, and Pablo picked me up, and the four of us set out toward Nurio, wrapped in a cold that seemed determined to climb into the truck with us. The streets we passed let out only a thin thread of light; everything else was pure shadow. From the speakers came one pirecua after another—some we had recorded in recent sessions, others not, but familiar all the same.
The world was still only a sketch when the community guard appeared at the entrance to Nurio, lighting us up with fluorescent lamps that sliced the night as if they meant to split it open. They asked where we were headed. Alex answered easily: to the lowering of the lantern pole. They let us through, perhaps because tradition has a way of opening paths that ordinary courtesy cannot.
We waited for the rest of the group and then continued on toward a point on the hillside that, even now, I couldn’t locate again. The darkness made any attempt at orientation useless: everything was one long gray stroke. Only the silhouettes of a few trees stood out, silent witnesses to so many years of pilgrimage. But dawn began stitching light into the landscape, stitch by stitch, and the fog blended with the clouds as if they were the same thing.
We found those who had arrived earlier: men of all ages, from seven- or eight-year-old boys to elders with experience written into their hands. They had already felled a tree and were organizing themselves to raise it, strip it of branches, transform it into the pole that would later become the village’s luminous sign. I was struck by how naturally each person knew what to do—how to tie the rope in the right place, how to balance the trunk, how to guide the younger ones with a word or the smallest gesture.
Then the music arrived. They set up the instruments and microphones right there, in the middle of the hillside, as if electricity too had always been part of the rite. The pirecuas rose into the fog and mixed it with voices. Someone passed with a bottle of charanda in hand; someone else offered sandwiches still warm. It was a kind of togetherness that didn’t need announcing—it was already there, moving among everyone.
Only men took part in the work of the tree, though all around there were presences and support of every kind. They told me that every December 8th, no matter the day of the week, the town gathers for this same labor. Many travel from far away, from wherever they now work or live, so as not to miss the date. One of them came over to talk with me. He said that although the celebration is for their people, they are always glad to welcome those from outside; that what’s beautiful is sharing, opening the space so others can understand—even a little—what this tradition means.
And that’s how I lived it: as a warm invitation, an unexpected gesture of hospitality.
Meanwhile, the tree kept changing. Some stripped it of branches, others lifted it, others dragged it. A few young men climbed the trunk with the ease of those who have grown up watching this happen every year. The music went on, shifting rhythm according to who asked for their favorite pirecua. Voices mixed with laughter, instructions, the faint crackle of fog.
Someone explained to me the reason for the lantern: each year, a family safeguards the image of the Christ Child, and the pole—with a star or a lantern at its tip—marks that place so the village knows where the dances, the shepherds’ play, the prayers, and the gatherings that sustain the spirit of the community will be held. It is a simple but powerful way of orienting life toward a point: a light that shows where stories, memories, and prayers will come together.
The day left me with the feeling of having witnessed a living weave: different hands interlacing to raise a symbol that belongs to everyone. The tradition did not explain itself with solemn words; it explained itself in the way those men worked together, sang together, laughed together. And one comes to understand that some customs don’t need to be fully deciphered: it is enough to see them breathing.
What remains in me is the lit fog of that morning, the music that accompanied the cutting of the tree, and the unexpected certainty of having been welcomed by people who care for what is theirs without closing themselves to anyone. Traditions like this, when looked at closely, reveal something we don’t always know how to name: an ancient and luminous way of continuing to be a community.
