Christmas is not always illuminated among shopping centers or spectacular showcases. Sometimes, it lights up in silence, at the top of the Huanuco mountain range. It is more than two and a half hours of travel from the city, between endless curves, thick fog and persistent cold. The road leads to Huiyan, a small community in the Umari district, Pachitea province.
In this place, Christmas had always passed us by, until journalists Yulia, Arelia Luna Japan, Patricia Santillán Mullisaca and Dan Arista Ruíz decided to change—even if only for a day—that reality. They did not have large budgets or ostentatious campaigns; They gave something much more valuable: time, will and a heart willing to share.
Huiyan a community dedicated mainly to agriculture. Their school, Educational Institution No. 32624, was last intervened in 2013. Since then, the walls and ceilings have aged silently, as if time moved faster than promises. Here, children grow up among worn notebooks, crop fields and dreams that often seem to be written in rough drafts.
CHRISTMAS SHARE
Before the gifts and chocolate, came the games. The journalist colleagues left the microphone and the camera for a moment to also become girls. The schoolyard was filled with laughter, excited screams and impromptu races. For a few hours, the news was not written in papers or headlines; It was written in every smile.
Then came the most anticipated moment: the hot chocolate that comforts the body and the panettone that sweetens the morning. For many it may seem like a small detail; For them, it will be a memory kept for years.
The magic of Christmas became visible when the gifts began to be delivered. Each toy, each simple gift, was much more than an object: it was a caress to the soul, a clear message of “you are not alone” in the middle of the mountains. In those shy smiles and in those bright eyes the future of Huiyan is also drawn: future authorities, teachers and leaders who today, for the first time, felt that someone came to their community to think of them.
The Christmas of the Huiyan children leaves a clear lesson: each smile is a living chronicle of hope; each look, a reminder that the true Christmas spirit is not written in speeches, but in gestures. When the heart moves, the news is hope.
Stories like Huiyan’s remind us that, many times, the most important news is not the one that generates controversy, but the one that sows hope. May this Christmas also be an opportunity to look towards those who need it most.
