Waiting for José Navidad on his bike
There was a time when children on San Antonio’s West Side stood on street corners, waiting for José Navidad. They called him Joe Christmas. He wore a white shirt, a thick, reddish winter coat and shiny crimson pants. He was gordito, with a long, white bristled beard.
No one in the neighborhood knew where Joe Christmas lived. Every winter solstice, like clockwork, on his red Schwinn bike, he’d arrive bearing Christmas gifts for children. He had bulging sacks with gifts for the children waiting on street corners. The kids loved the plastic reindeer attached to the bike’s stern and the shiny reflectors on the wheels’ spokes.
“Feliz Navidad, niños!”
“Gracias!” they shouted.
On those chilly evenings close to Christmas, children knew he was coming because they’d hear the jingle-jangle of the bell ringer on his handlebars. He’d show up after suppertime when the night was quiet. Adults often told children that Joe Christmas had a shop on the North Side of town where he made wooden toys for all the girls and boys.
As a kid, I was one of those believers. Why? Because José Navidad was special and different from other storybook Santas. Every time Joe Christmas finished passing out gifts, he’d shout, “Ho, ho, ho,” and pedal off to another street.
The kids on my block believed he disappeared into the sky. Even teenagers tried to figure out how Joe Christmas rode his bike so fast and vanished so quickly. Everybody stopped trying to guess how Joe Christmas dashed off to other parts of the barrio. And every year, he’d come through our neighborhoods, and we’d listen for his whistle and bike bells.
One freezing, dark Christmas all the children worried because Joe Christmas hadn’t shown up — neither sight nor sound of José Navidad. The children had baked cookies and small buñuelos, and filled Dixie cups with hot chocolate. They’d left goodies for Navidad on makeshift tables at the end of one block. They waited until all the kids had left to go to their homes to sleep. Some children slept with windows cracked open, hoping to hear Navidad’s Christmas bike with the jingle-jangle of his bells.
Finally, around midnight, they heard Joe Christmas’ jolly “Ho, ho, ho.” Those who woke up caught Joe Christmas eating the cookies and buñuelos, and slurping on hot chocolate.
When Joe Christmas saw children running out of their houses, he hopped on his bike and vanished into the night with a distant “ho, ho, ho,” and the fading jingle-jangle of bells on that cold, chilly night. The gifts that been left on the sidewalk were evenly distributed.
As the children got older, they never again saw Joe Christmas or his gifts. The adults blamed the city for restricting Navidad from giving gifts to children and riding his Christmas bike late at night.
The last people to witness Joe Christmas and the distribution of his gifts still retell the story. Even now children wait on street corners hoping to see José Navidad and his red bike and the plastic reindeer, and hear the booming, “Ho, ho, ho!”
Many say Joe Christmas went to another side of the city where children are poorer. Others say he was deported back to Juarez, and still others insist Navidad continues his tradition.
Although the kids who tell the Yuletide story are parents themselves, none appreciate the tale of Joe Christmas as much as I do, because I am a witness to the jingle-jangle of a cheerful, jolly man whose real name was José Navidad.