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more sedate, and Nochebuena made Christmas a little more lively. Since the adults had to be up at the crack of dawn to open presents with the kids, we couldn’t stay up all night and then go for breakfast to La Carreta or Versailles. Besides, the house was too small for the kids to be able to sleep while the adults carried on outside. Since by the 1970s the Church had slackened its rules on fasting, most years dinner was served before midnight mass. By two or three in the morning Nochebuena was over.
    I loved these hybrid celebrations, half day and half night, for they seemed to combine the best of both worlds. But, sadly, biculturalism is a balancing act that topples with the generations, and by the end of our third decade in exile our Nochebuenas had changed again. Many of the older members of the family passed away in the 1970s and 1980s; other aunts and uncles were either too old to travel to Miami every December, or too infirm to leave their houses. When his wife died, my uncle Pedro stopped celebrating holidays altogether. (Now he gets on a plane on the morning of December 24 and spends Christmas Eve at the blackjack tables in the Bahamas; a
noche buena
is when he doesn’t lose too much money.) Then also, those in my generation have their own lives and can’t always make it down to Miami for Christmas. Once every few years, some of us still coincide in Miami for Nochebuena, but it seems to happen less and less often. With the death of the old-timers, Cuba is dying too.
    Every Nochebuena for the last several years my mother grumbles that this will be her last—that she’s getting too old for all of the preparations—but come the following year she roasts another leg of pork, cooks another pot of
congrí,
and tries to get the family together. However Americanized she may say she is, she doesn’t seem willing to give up this Cuban custom. Old Havanas are hard to break, but for Nena and Gustavo, Nochebuena has become a mournful holiday, a reminder of how much things have changed in their lives. Years ago Nochebuena used to be a time to remember and celebrate things Cuban. The ritual toast, “Next year in Cuba,” set the mood for the evening, a mood both nostalgic and hopeful, for the Nochebuenas of yesteryear were a warrant on the Nochebuenas of tomorrow. During those very good nights, everything harked back to Cuba—the celebrants, the food, the music, the customs. At no other time of the year did Cuba seem so close, did
regreso
seem so imminent. Every year we heard my father’s favorite chanteuse, Olga Guillot, singing “White Christmas” with Spanish lyrics. Every year we danced to “La Mora,” an old Cuban song whose questioning refrain was uncannily relevant, “
¿Cuándo
volverá, La Nochebuena, cuándo volverá?
” “When will it return, Nochebuena, when will it return?” Soon, we all thought, very soon. It turned out not to be so.
    In all the years I have resided away from Miami, I’ve missed only one Nochebuena, and that because one year we decided to spend Christmas at our own home in North Carolina, an experiment that didn’t turn out well and won’t be repeated. As long as my parents are alive and willing, I’ll go to their house for Nochebuena. Although the celebration and the celebrants have changed a great deal through the years, more than I and they would have liked, Nochebuena remains for me the holiest—if no longer the happiest— night of the year.
    But I have no illusions. Our Miami Nochebuenas have come to resemble those skeletal Christmas trees from Cuba. I could make a joke and say that you can’t make roast pig from a sow’s ear, but this is no joke. After my parents have passed away, I hope not until many years from now, I will celebrate Nochebuena in Chapel Hill with my American wife and my almost-American children. Instead of going to Miami, I’ll be staying put. I’ll be