Love and Wishes

For the first time in his life, Gabriel Ramos, 16, won’t be home for the holidays to help set up the manger, a family tradition in his Mexican town. He’ll miss out on Las Posadas, a religious ritual. But, most of all, in an inscription in a teddy bear-shaped card he crafted for his grandmother, Gabriel expresses how he’ll miss just being at her side.

Gabriel, who emigrated with his mother from Puebla eight months ago, isn’t alone in his separation from loved ones during this family season.

Fellow classmates in Deanna Brantley’s Introduction to English Reading at Belmont High School’s Newcomer’s Center--for students who have just arrived in this country--have used glitter and sequins, metallic snowflakes and cotton, and colorful ribbon and foil to create exquisite holiday cards for mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, and other family members in foreign lands they hope to be reunited with next Christmas.

“The cards are a way for students to connect with the people in their lives they have left behind,” Brantley says. “Some of these kids have come here with nobody and have come to nobody. There is a sweetness in their souls that you don’t see a lot with kids who have had everything.”