Luminarias bring light, hope to the Borderland

As the end of each year nears, the everyday objects sand, paper bags and candles turn into bright reminders of home, family and hope.

To see a luminaria, you see the whole picture — the gently flickering golden glow lining streets, driveways, homes and churches. Unassembled, a luminaria is just a brown paper bag, a small candle and sand. The magic only comes with the community-driven act of setting them up.

“We typically have a beautiful Christmas Eve; there’s a bright sky, you watch Venus rise in the west, the stars come out, and it’s that beautiful transition from light to dark. There’s never a picture that captures what it feels like,” said Alma Ramsey, who sets up luminarias for others as part of her Luminaria Depot business.

Luminarias have a long history in the Borderland and in the Southwest. The humble paper lanterns are said to have originated with the Spaniards, who brought them to this area after being inspired by Chinese paper lanterns, according to luminariadepot.com. For Catholics, luminarias are a way to guide Christ into their homes.

As Christmas edges nearer, different groups in El Paso are preparing to spend a full day setting up luminarias. Centro de Salud Familiar La Fe has hundreds of volunteers who set up around 4,000 luminarias along Scenic Drive in Central El Paso. This year, the group is hoping for cooperative weather Saturday evening.

“It’s our 25th year doing this. It’s a beautiful tradition that we’re very proud to carry out," said Estela Reyes López, media and public information officer for Centro de Salud Familiar La Fe. "Our CEO began this tradition within our La Fe family as a means for our organization to give back."

For some, luminarias are a reminder of the humble holiday traditions deeply rooted in El Pasoans. If you ever volunteered to help put up luminarias, you know what it’s like. You unfold hundreds of brown paper bags, with a paper cut or two as collateral damage. You spend a few hours bent over, with an aching back, pouring sand into the bags and nestling the candle so that the entire creation doesn’t fly away. If you’re unlucky, you have to wrestle with the wind to keep the flame lit. As night falls, you go around lighting candles. But when you finish, you get the wonderful treat of seeing your everyday objects transformed into an expression of light that breaks through even the darkest nights.

For Reyes López, setting up the luminarias along Scenic Drive takes a ton of muscle, but the payoff is more than worth it. She said the first wave of volunteers are out at dawn, moving in sand and firewood and blocking off the road. Then another wave comes to set up the bags and fill them with sand. Right before sunset, more volunteers come in to light the candles. By 6 p.m., everything is ready.

"There’s this beautiful glow guiding you, leading you towards something beautiful, something better," Reyes López said.

Ramsey, who lives in West El Paso, said she remembers seeing luminarias as a child with her grandmother. She began the Luminaria Depot six years ago as a way to help raise money for a friend's knee surgery in Juárez. Now, she and neighborhood kids looking to earn extra Christmas money set up luminarias for clients who can't or don't want to do it themselves. Ramsey also sells supplies for luminarias.

"We’re big believers in giving back to the people where we live, and we’ve always felt like that’s really the spirit of Christmas," Ramsey said. "We always want to make sure that anyone we can reach out to and help can also get a hand up at Christmas."

After setting up luminarias comes the food, of course. Tamales (red and green because you had a long day and you deserve it), hot champurrado and maybe a few biscochos. Catholics might even host a posada, going door-to-door in the neighborhood while singing. En el nombre del cielo …

Ramsey remembers getting together at a close family friend's house to make tamales. Once the tamales went into the pot to steam, everyone would then start folding the luminaria bags.

Luminarias are a welcome sight in the Southwest, like being greeted into someone's home. And their purpose serves no one single person, but instead can mean different things to different faces.

For Reyes López, the luminarias signify hope.

"Our belief at La Fe is that the path must lead us to social justice. It must lead us to a place where we can have dignified homes, good education, health care. And right now we’re at a time where many of us have a lot of questions for what the future holds in 2017," Reyes López said. "But we need to believe and understand that as long as we stand by our neighbors, everything’s going to be all right."

Sara Sanchez can be reached at 546-6147; ssanchez@elpasotimes.com; @siempresarita on Twitter.

Luminarias in the Borderland

Navidad de La Fe Luminarias
Where: Scenic Drive
When: 6-10 p.m. Saturday
Cost: Free, but canned food and cash donations for Centro de Salud Familiar La Fe will be collected
Information: 545-7190

San Elizario Luminaria Festival
Where: San Elizario Historic District
When: 5-9 p.m. Saturday
Cost: Free
Information: San Elizario Historic District on Facebook

The Luminaria Depot
What: Helps El Pasoans with setup of their luminarias
Information: Grace at 412-6656 or luminariadepot.com