What Christmas means to sponsored children

Story from a child at the SOS Children's Village Portoviejo on what Christmas means to her

Love, decorations, and Christmas carols

The village is my home, a nice place where we find protection, a family, and loads of love. During Christmas time, we all gather together as a community to celebrate it: with my brothers, sisters, SOS aunts, and SOS mothers.

The most beautiful thing is to get up early in the morning and start working on the Christmas decorations. By midnight on Christmas Eve, everything must be well set up: the Christmas tree with all its lights, the crib of Baby Jesus and all his relatives and relations around the crib. Everything is surrounded by multicolour lights and garlands, Christmas posters and, of course, the gifts for us.

In my family, we all wear our new clothes. We comb our hair specially, and spend a very good time waiting for the arrival of Christmas Eve.

Our aunts and mothers also get busy setting up the food for the traditional dinner. They cook cooperatively: while a mother makes the chicken, an aunt makes the hot chocolate, or something like that. Our Aunt Raquel's cake is the best. It is simply very, very delicious. And Aunt Marisely's voice is the nicest. She enjoys singing happy Christmas carols and saying prayers. Others bring candies, gelatine, soda, and ice-cream.

Christmas day celebrations

At 12 o'clock sharp, it is the youngest child of the family - except a baby - who carries the image of Baby Jesus in his arms, showing it to us one by one while each of us kisses the image. Jesus is about to be born. In the meantime, we sing more welcome carols as loudly and cheerfully as we can.

Afterwards, our mum puts our gifts on a big table and gives them to us one at the time. After many hugs and lots of cheerfully expressed Merry-Christmases, we are seated at the table for the special Christmas dinner, the greatest dinner of the year. And after an hour or so, it is time to go to bed, but all with happy bellies.

Next day in the morning, a delicious hot chocolate with sweeties is waiting for us. We hurry up to finish it up because we are going on a visit. Yes, as often, we are going to spend Christmas Day with our [SOS] mother's family. We love it a lot because we feel like her family is our family. They welcome us with joy and love, and feel happy about our visit.

You see! We are lucky to have so many people that love us. I love Christmas.

SOS Children has been working in Ecuador since 1963 and supports over 3,000 children at five SOS Children's Villages (Quito, Esmereldas, Ibarra, Ricuarte/Cuenca, and Portoviejo) and through projects like the SOS Social Centres at these children's villages.

You can help us give children in Ecuador a family for life by sponsoring a child today.