Comfort and joy-at last
Immigrant children, many from conflict-torn nations, see Santa for the first time
By Nikole Hannah-Jones
The Oregonian
The children didn’t laugh or race about as they entered the winter wonderland with the sparkling white Christmas trees, dancing gingerbread men and enormous lollipops. They didn’t examine the mounds of brightly wrapped packages stuffed under the trees.
Instead, the babes folded somberly to the floor. No giggles. Barely even a fidget.
“Look at these children,” Victoria Libov says sadly. “They are not smiling. It doesn’t come naturally to them. But in America, it will.”
The world, with all its sorrows and conflicts and pain, came to see Santa Thursday. Children of every hue and scattered from their homes across the globe, gathered in a Northeast Portland gymnasium to find the joy of Christmas.
But as first they just didn’t know how. Long perilous journeys brought most of 240 children to the United States just months and for some just weeks ago. They escaped conflict-torn places such as Somalia, Ivory Coast, Uzbekistan and Myanmar, the nation formerly know as Burma. Some had lived their entire lives in refugee camps.
And now, the sat in a fantasyland put on by the Immigration and “Refugee community Organization, or IRCO, which helps refugees in Portland with jobs, Housing and language skills.
“Do you guys hear Santa?” a woman called out in a language they didn’t understand. The children stared, their eyes shifting back and forth and then locking on the white guy with the long beard and funny looking hat.
He snatched up a glass and chugged. “Santa Loves milk!”
Snickers escaped the mouths of a couple of kids. And prodded by adults, a few walked up timidly and shook his hand. Then they were directed to the presents, separated by gender and age, and told they each could have one.
A boy in a camouflage jacket grabbed the biggest one- a large rectangle sheathed in bright green. Girls in scarlet hijabs or in flowered head scarves took turns sitting on Santa’s lap and then picked packages for themselves.
They sat again, their arms wrapped around the gifts. As the first child tore into his box, smiles flooded the room. They threw paper to the floor as they unwrapped fire trucks and skateboards, soccer balls and baby dolls.
The room for the first time exploded with the laughter of children. A Burmese boy showed his new board game to a boy from the Ivory Coast who had just opened A Walkman.
“I’m happy and having a great time,” Khin Win Paw said through a translator. The Burmese girl had never live outside of Southeast Asian refugee camp until she came to Portland three months ago. She didn’t know who that red-suited man was, but she like him. Her father watched nearby.
“I’m so grateful,” Htay Win said. “I want my kids to be happy and have a Christmas because they’ve never had one before.” It doesn’t matter, he says, that the family is Buddhist. Life has been hard and he wants them to know joy.
That is why Luz Toledo, a job coach for IRCO and Venezuelan immigrant, started the Christmas party a year ago. “A lot of these kids have never seen Santa or had gifts,” Toledo said. “I wanted them to experience that, to be a part of it.”
She paused tearing up. “This is to welcome them and show them love. That we’re just one big family.”
The world came to see Santa Thursday, with all its sorrows and conflict and pain. And for just a few hours, the world smiled.
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