Christmas is coming to Cuba - after 29 years.
Nearly three decades after abolishing the Christmas break in Cuba to keep people working in the sugar fields, the ruling Communist Party proposed yesterday the permanent reinstatement of a December 25th holiday.
A party statement also insisted that President Fidel Castro's government, which came to power in a 1959 revolution, had never been anti-religious, although it admitted the initial exclusion of believers from party ranks was "discriminatory".
Cuba dropped the traditional Christmas holiday in 1969 as part of an effort to produce a record 10 million tonne sugar harvest that season. But the party granted the 11 million islanders a day off work last December 25th as a gesture before Pope John Paul's visit to Cuba at the start of 1998.
In a statement that filled the front page of Communist Party daily Granma yesterday, the politburo (the party's highest policymaking body) said the decision had been taken bearing in mind "the unity of our people" and despite the accompanying "sacrifice of dozens of millions of pesos in salaries, goods and services not produced" on December 25th.
The statement insisted that even though Cuba's "imperialist" enemies exploited religious sentiments for "counterrevolutionary" purposes, "the Cuban Revolution was never characterised by an anti-religious spirit".
Comparing Cuba's 1959 upheaval with the religious wars of the Middle Ages, the Spanish Civil War, and the revolutions in France, Russia and Mexico, the politburo added that "no other revolution in the history of mankind has a page so clean of violence or repression for religious motives".
The decision to suspend the December 25th holiday in 1969 was intended to facilitate the mobilisation of hundreds of thousands of sugar workers, and "was not inspired by anti-religious sentiment at all", the statement said.
The pope's January visit consolidated an official thawing toward the church and, after decades of being marginalised, the church has been eager to build on concessions it was granted around the papal trip.
The local Roman Catholic Church, which has enjoyed better relations with the state since the trip, had been calling for another Christmas break this year.
"The Cuban Communist Party . . . proposes to the Council of State that from this year onwards, each December 25th should be considered a holiday for Christians and non-Christians, believers and non-believers," the politburo said.
Castro (72) is head of both the party and the Council of State, the government's executive branch, which is expected to endorse the decision.
The church immediately welcomed the announcement. "I think this is a positive step which corresponds to the population's religious sentiment and a tradition that existed for a long time in Cuba," a church spokesman said.
Although not an official holiday for 28 years until 1997, many Cubans, especially believers, have over the decades continued to celebrate Christmas. On the streets of Havana, the announcement seemed popular among believers and non-believers alike. "If the party and the politburo, that is to say the revolution, have decided this is to be, then that's because it is good for all of us," said Luis Felipe Stuard, a 59-year-old Cuban who has been a party militant for 20 years.