"We can celebrate Christmas without entering religion or consumerism"
- In order to find a new way of celebrating Christmas, the gorliz Jon Etxebarria Txonorain has recovered one of the ancestral traditions of the Basques. He says that in the winter solstice, "in the winter," they burned logs to give strength to the sun and kept that burned wood that he thought was good. From these collections, known as Olentz-enbor, he publishes an illustrated story along with the illustrator Malen Amenabar.
What do they count in this story?
We particularly propose the possibility of holding Christmas differently. We wanted to recover an old celebration, ours, the one that was made in the Basque Country, or at least make it visible. We want to guide reflection from our roots and from mythology through a traditional story. It's fiction, but what we tell is what was once done in the Basque Country.
How did you think about doing such a job?
In the midst of the pandemic, several families gathered in an indigenous forest, on the border between municipalities. One day, at Christmas, we saw the need to do something in common, different, and pulling away from it, I started researching. What was done before? How were Christmas celebrated in Basque Country? And so I started reading what several researchers wrote, studied it and brought it in. I have sought something possible and close.
And how were ancient Christmas celebrated?
Today, religion has a lot of weight in these celebrations, but once everything was related to nature. In December the days begin to shorten, there is less light and a celebration that would be the winter solstice to resurrect that old sun "about to die". They set fire to illuminate the sun. It is clear that this was done in many places, between 20 and 21 December; they went into the forest, cut down a large oak tree, asked for forgiveness, took it home, divided it into auzolan and smoked for several days, without extinguishing the fire. However, the chunks of coal or trunk were not completely burned; they believed they were magical, kept some chunks for the following year or gave them away to attract the good voice.
In the story, you mix the trunk with the Olentzero, right?
Yes, researcher Félix Muguruza asks in his blog: "What if Olentzero was a trunk? ". With this, he puts on the table the origin theory of the name of the carbonero, but we have not entered into that debate; what we have taken in us is that in many places he was called Trunk of Olentzero before that piece of wood was the current character. It is known in other places with the name of subijana, border trunk... Thus, we wanted to take the importance of the trunk to move away from the consumerist and Catholic celebration of current Christmas.
To help the story you have counted with the help of illustrator Malen Amenabar. How has collaboration been?
At first I wrote to tell it in the woods, among friends and in nature. But the reception was so good that we thought we would publish, because so far there has not been. So from the beginning I saw that the illustration had to be accompanied, and for that I was led by the collective Txakur Gorria. Malen, my friend, is involved in this, and in the belief that his style was very well married to the theme, modern but old, he participated in the project.
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