Europe in These Times: Navidad, Las Islas
Europe In These Times is a series of posts by the American Catholic freelance writer Kevin Duffy, detailing his encounters—sometimes sought out, other times not—with the rich religious heritage of the European continent.
Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain, 24 December 2020
Ever since we settled on a trip to the Canary Islands, I had been looking forward to Mass on Christmas Eve there—a celebratory ending to a difficult year of lockdowns imposed and lifted and re-imposed, a new beginning on those warm and open islands after months of dull confinement at home. Indeed, the islands constituted the only “green” area in all of Europe at the time: no mask mandates, no restaurant closures, no curfews, no restrictions (as opposed to where my wife and I resided in Germany, with its shuttered eateries and requirements to make appointments to visit the furniture store). Christmas Eve Mass at the Cathedral of Santa Ana in the islands’ co-capital of Las Palmas would be, I imagined, a dramatic joy, with crowd and choir, lights and palm trees, color and celebration.
Our trip began a week or so before Christmas on the island of Fuerteventura, where over several days we wandered, driving north along the road where the sand dunes of Corralejo come down to the beaches that intersperse the island’s rocky northeastern coast, eating sopa de pescado as we watched the fishermen cast out form the rocks at the village of Cotillo, walking along the shore south of Puerto del Rosario each day and looking east over the Atlantic toward an unseen Africa. But Christmas Eve Mass over on Gran Canaria was never far from mind.
A few days later we flew to that island, ensconced ourselves in the dated charm of the Hotel Santa Catalina, and began to explore Las Palmas: more seafood, more coastline, crowded streets and patios, majorero cheese and mojo picón sauce, Playa de Las Canteras with its life-sized Bethlehem of sand-sculptures, Parque Doramas where the families wandered around the ponds and the palm trees.
The days fell pleasantly into the past, and we arrived to Christmas Eve. The Cathedral of Santa Ana, also called the Cathedral of Las Palmas or the Cathedral of the Canaries, sits dark gray and unremarkable in a perfectly fine little plaza in the city, but the less-than-impressive exterior did nothing to dampen my expectations. We entered to discover that the inside of the cathedral, too, was quite plain, with sparingly little color or decoration. A bit underwhelmed, we took our seats and waited for the pews around us, and the many rows behind, to fill with fellow celebrants. But that never happened, and Mass began with less than thirty attendees barely filling the first few rows of a Cathedral that could likely sit several hundred.
Alas, too, it appeared that the music would be somewhat less memorable than I had hoped; no organ was to be heard as the simple tones of a keyboard (or the recording of one) began to play. As if to match the overall theme, the two priests then emerged toward the altar in plain white cassocks or albs, wearing no chasubles (the typical garment a priest wears at a Mass) and not a stitch of color between them. They were, moreover, the two oldest priests I had ever seen presiding at a Mass, and although they moved quite slowly, they were actually quick to put to rest any hope of a choir’s involvement, as the eldest of the two lifted a handheld microphone and, in a gravelly mumble, began to sing the entrance hymn himself. He would, in fact, do all of the singing throughout the Mass, most often while seated and propping the microphone into his belly to aid in the holding of it.
Through a combination of the acoustics of the large and empty space, the ragged voice of the elderly priest, and my rather woeful Spanish comprehension abilities (to be honest, mostly that last one), I understood very little of the Mass. And so when it concluded we departed the cathedral into the evening of Las Palmas, turning to walk back through the neighborhood of Triana toward the Santa Catalina. The streets had fairly emptied, with revelers presumably gone home for family dinners, and the lack of street life matched my sullen mood in the aftermath of what I had considered to be an unimpressive Christmas Mass, one so different than I had expected. I said nothing, but we were only a few moments out of the church when my Spanish wife, who had obviously been able to understand the just concluded-proceedings far better than I had, set me, and the night, aright: “I loved that the priest sang himself,” she said happily. “And the sermon,” she added, “was beautiful”.
