A Flash Of Christmas

A different kind of light

- Thomas R. Farrell

IT WASN’T MY USUAL SORT OF CHRISTMAS. I’d gone down to Mexico, to the Yucatan Peninsula, where I was visiting my brother Edward. He was serving as a missionary priest to some small villages between Chichén Itzá and Mérida. I’d brought my Kodak Instamatic camera with me—this was some 50 years ago—and on Christmas Eve, I was using it to take pictures of the villagers celebrating the traditional Las Posadas, a procession through town that reenacted Joseph and Mary’s search for an inn in Bethlehem.