You may have seen the flyers or heard of “Christmas in the Barrio” (CITB) mentioned. Read on to learn more about this wonderful, not‐to‐be‐missed event. It takes place Friday, December 16 at 7:00 PM at Teatro Esperanza on 5th and Bristol in the Hunting Park area of North Philadelphia.
Join us to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ with friends and family. Whether you are a Latino, Latina, African American, Asian, White. Any ethnicity, background, upbringing, denomination. You will find community in others as the birth of our Savior is celebrated in traditional Latino ways.
The brainchild of Christmas in the Barrio is the Reverend Luis Cortés ‐ Founder, President, and CEO of Esperanza. He came up with Christmas in the Barrio four years ago in December 2018 as a manifestation of Esperanza’s commitment to community arts with the opening of Teatro Esperanza, a high quality theater for dance, drama, music, and film hailing Latino arts.
Here is what the Rev. Cortes has to say about how it all came to be: “We built Teatro Esperanza because Navidad is celebrated in every Hispanic country and is part of our family tradition. As a faith-based organization, celebrating the birth of Christ is a wonderful opportunity for us to build cohesion and faith in our community.”
Building faith within our community is important to Reverend Cortes and Esperanza. He says that “Faith in God can be the glue that keeps our Latino community together as one. Teatro Esperanza is the impetus for that goal. Christmas in the Barrio has us celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ in ways that trigger wonderful memories that we as Latinos can genuinely appreciate.”
As Reverend Cortes puts it, “Christmas in the Barrio gives us a chance to celebrate Christmas in traditions rooted in the lands our immigrant families came from. The bigger picture is that it both protects the old culture and projects to the new culture of Spanish speaking people that they can come live in this neighborhood and enjoy old and new ways of living.”
What we can expect to experience
According to Rev. Luis, “Esperanza is a faith‐based organization with a comprehensive suite of services offered to empower and educate the community. Christmas is the biggest holiday in our Latin American culture. CITB is meant to be the cultural piece that highlights our faith in Christ. Latinos are undeniably tied to the culture based out of a religious understanding which says that this holiday is a time for family, and it’s called Christmas because of the religious understanding of the Christ child. When Esperanza built the theater in 2018, part of the goal was to provide a space to draw the best art and artists. Another part of that goal became creating an annual event that celebrates our culture through the birth of Christ. The impetus for building the theater was to use it in the best ways possible for the community. Christmas in the Barrio is one of those ways.”
Rev. Luis goes on to say, “There is a great connection between Christmas in the Barrio and the suite of services Esperanza offers. We are a comprehensive organization, and we are trying to build a strong community which we call an opportunity community where we can have all our needs met by our businesses and schools. As Latinos, we look for ways to affirm who we are and where we come from with an understanding of where we’re going to. For that, we must have institutions who understand the needs of our Hispanic community. That’s also why Esperanza built schools and different institutions that we own and operate. We see Esperanza, which means ‘Hope’ in Spanish, as the opportunity community. Christmas in the Barrio is that piece in the equation that feeds our need to enjoy our culture through art and faith in Christ drawing from our pasts and looking to our collective future.”
Rev. Luis shares that “art feeds the soul and helps us to see things that we normally don’t see. It’s an expression of who we are. We are so blessed that we can live in two cultures. Through art, we can teach others about our heritage and learn new ones.”
Faith in God builds cohesion in the community
“Celebrating our faith in God is part of why we at Esperanza have created entities and services that promote education and a healthy institutionalization process. We do these things to the highest extent possible to help our people excel and celebrate who God made them. Christmas in the Barrio highlights that very faith in a metaphorical language that this community understands and appreciates. But it’s not privy to the Latino community only. Anyone, within or outside of our Latino community has a lot to gain from the effects of that cohesion,” says Cortés.
Christmas in the Barrio is an Esperanza Arts Center production that’s presented in collaboration with several divisions, including EHED, AMLA, the Academy, and National Programs.
The event is free to the public. Please bring an unwrapped toy as a donation for a child. Donations are delivered to the Salvation Army for their Christmas toy giveaway.
For more information on the services Esperanza offers go to www.esperanza.us
We do standard education, Kindergarten through college. But education can also be how to buy a house, how to take care of your finances, how to find a job, promote good health habits or be a pastoral leader in a church. All of that is an educational process. Esperanza is good at education and economic and housing development. We build houses. We build schools. We keep 5th Street going. We build businesses and find partners to build with us. For example, the first bank to open in this neighborhood was built by us. It’s the Citizens Bank on Luzerne Street. There was no college in thisneighborhood. We opened Esperanza College of Eastern University. Whatever we can do to create an entity, we do. And, if we can’t, we partner with one that can run the entity. All that creates what we call an ‘opportunity community.’ The goal is to provide education for our community which in turn, provides opportunities. Rev. Luis Cortes
