This holiday, almost upon us, seems to be different, slightly more tension, more pressure, life moving faster.

The highway from the Mexican resort city of Cancun to the architectural ruins of Merida, capital city of the Yucatan, is a distance of a couple hundred miles. On this stretch of road, on Dec. 12, teams of young students, wearing uniforms similar to athletes at track meets, will pass a torch and begin running in relays.

To the uninitiated, it seems like an Olympic warm-up, carrying the burning torch from Athens to the site of the games. To those who know, it is a personal sacrifice by young people to commemorate the day of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the day in 1531 when the Virgin Mary appeared to Juan Diego, a poor Indian. Legend says that millions of indigenous people converted to Catholicism as a result of that appearance.

In Mexico, and many parts of the southwestern United States, the devout mark the day with all night vigils and prayers to the patron saint of Mexico. It is also a sacrifice of sorts.

For many people in Mexico and throughout the world, there is little to sacrifice but their wills, their commitment. You can see this mirrored in the prints, paintings and statues of Jesus on the walls of their homes.

This is a Jesus in greater agony than would appear in representations in this country. The crown’s thorns are larger and sharper. 

There is more blood and agony.

Scholars say this reflects the people’s own hard lives, their suffering that becomes even more pronounced at holidays and celebrations.

The sacrifice of the days of Our Lady of Guadalupe eases quickly into the Christmas celebration and seasonal joyous tidings for almost all religions.

In Mayan villages of the Yucatan, on the edge of the ever encroaching jungle, most of the homes are of wood poles, thatched palm leaved roofs and mud packed floors. The Mayans, as many as a million, descend from the once powerful civilization that built cities, developed a language, conquered mathematics and developed precise astronomical calculations.

Here, women have a life expectancy of 65, while men who are mostly hard working laborers, can live to 75. Women marry as young as 12 or 13, give birth in their homes and cure their children with herbs, with remedies passed from generation to generation.

Mexico is ranked 63rd in the world for life expectancy. The United States is 26th.

Christmas decorations are few, single strands of lights and perhaps a personal shrine, are the only holiday trappings. In creches, the Magi and shepherds have brown faces, and this, one thinks is only fitting.

There are few wide eyes at the windows of shops. With a minimum wage of $5 a day, gifts are small and few. 

Dinners are decidedly less bounteous.

On the days before Christmas, the young men and women who have escaped the lot of the farm and hut for the cities, will ride the bus and return to the villages on the jungle’s edge.

Reunited with families, they will hike to the bigger villages where the churches always dominate the square to sing and pray in Mayan or Spanish.

They will sing of their joy and one knows that whatever powers there are, will hear their voices, strongly, beautifully, as any in the world.