A Quiet Frist Holiday

I arrived in the United States in 1996 and settled in Palm Beach county, Florida, just before the holidays. I was grateful to be here and understood the prospect. Still, nothing prepared me for how quiet that first holiday season would feel.

Back home in Haiti, the holidays weren’t limited to a single day. Christmas Eve unfolded late into the night with something we call Reveyon. People gathered very late, and food was prepared carefully and generously. Friends and family arrived – often more people than expected. Laughter carried from house to house, and music drifted through open windows. No one worried about work the next day; life slowed down so people could be together.

That rhythm didn’t exist for me yet in America.

That year,the holidays arrived quietly. Streets emptied,stores closed early,and the world felt still. I barely saw my brother, Mercidieu, who worked double shifts. there wasn’t a long table waiting at home,or familiar voices filling the space – just silence and distance.

For many immigrants,the first holiday season isn’t really a party. ItS a reminder of friends left behind, of relatives far away, of traditions that live vividly in memory but aren’t yet part of daily life. Your physically present,but emotionally,you’re still somewhere else.

In Haiti, we hosted often. Celebration was something you protected,and work adjusted around it whenever possible.Of course, some people still worked – doctors and caregivers always did, as patients still needed care. But even then, work existed alongside the moment; it didn’t erase it.

In the years that followed, I also spent some holidays in the Dominican Republic, where I went to medical school. Those seasons carried a different kind of familiarity. I wasn’t fully at home, but I wasn’t entirely alone either. The language was shared, the food felt close, and the music carried echoes of Haiti, even when the traditions weren’t exactly the same. Those holidays taught me something vital: belonging doesn’t return all at once, and it doesn’t always return in its original form. Sometimes it comes through proximity,through cultural