CHRISTMAS 2025 IN HAITI: THE RIGHT TO CELEBRATE WITHOUT EXAGGERATING
, this Christmas 2025, the question is not whether to celebrate or not. The real question is how to celebrate with conscience, measure, and a sense of responsibility. A tried people also has the right to breathe, to release tension, and to a form of moral emancipation.
By La Rédaction · Port-au-Prince
· 2 min read · Updated 24 April 2026
Translated from French — AI-assisted and reviewed by the editorial team. The French version is authoritative. Read the original · About our translation policy
In Haiti, this Christmas 2025, the question is not whether to celebrate or not.
The real question is how to celebrate with conscience, measure, and a sense of responsibility. A tried people also has the right to breathe, to release tension,
and to a form of moral emancipation.
A large youth population, often deprived of a clear future, has the right to joy, entertainment, music,
to laughter that brings relief, to celebration that, for a moment, restores the taste for life. Celebrating is not a crime.
Rejoicing is not a betrayal.
Seeking a moment of light in the heart of darkness is profoundly human. But celebration, when it becomes exaggeration, loses its meaning and can transform into carelessness, indifference, or even provocation in the face of collective suffering. The ABC philosophy – Acting for the Common Good invites us to a path of balance:
the right to celebrate, without losing one's head or one's sense of purpose. Celebrate, yes —
without ostentatious waste,
without violence,
without destructive excesses,
without forgetting those who weep,
who are hungry,
who are afraid,
who have had to flee to the provinces or abroad,
those who languish in camps of misery,
dispossessed of their belongings,
bereaved by the assassination of a loved one,
or who have lost everything. Celebrate, yes —
but without confusing entertainment with irresponsibility,
freedom with disorder,
joy with civic abdication. Christmas is not a denial of the crisis.
It is a conscious pause,
a moment to catch one's breath,
to reconnect, and to remember that life is still worth living. For our youth in particular,
entertainment must remain a space for recreation, not a permanent refuge.
For a people is not saved solely by dancing, but neither is it saved
by stifling all joy. Haiti's challenge, this Christmas 2025,
is to reconcile joy and responsibility,
celebration and conscience,
freedom and the pursuit of the common good. This is what it means to celebrate without exaggerating:
to rejoice without losing oneself,
to breathe without forgetting the insecurity, precarity, and instability that kill, wound, rape, steal, terrorize, and destabilize society, to celebrate without abandoning the essential. May this Christmas be a moment of human warmth, discreet solidarity,
measured joy,
of meditation and, above all, collective reflection. For after the celebration,
it will still be necessary to rise,
to think, to act, and to rebuild. The ABC Center calls for responsible joy, conscious freedom,
and active hope.
Evans Paul
Former Prime Minister
The real question is how to celebrate with conscience, measure, and a sense of responsibility. A tried people also has the right to breathe, to release tension,
and to a form of moral emancipation.
A large youth population, often deprived of a clear future, has the right to joy, entertainment, music,
to laughter that brings relief, to celebration that, for a moment, restores the taste for life. Celebrating is not a crime.
Rejoicing is not a betrayal.
Seeking a moment of light in the heart of darkness is profoundly human. But celebration, when it becomes exaggeration, loses its meaning and can transform into carelessness, indifference, or even provocation in the face of collective suffering. The ABC philosophy – Acting for the Common Good invites us to a path of balance:
the right to celebrate, without losing one's head or one's sense of purpose. Celebrate, yes —
without ostentatious waste,
without violence,
without destructive excesses,
without forgetting those who weep,
who are hungry,
who are afraid,
who have had to flee to the provinces or abroad,
those who languish in camps of misery,
dispossessed of their belongings,
bereaved by the assassination of a loved one,
or who have lost everything. Celebrate, yes —
but without confusing entertainment with irresponsibility,
freedom with disorder,
joy with civic abdication. Christmas is not a denial of the crisis.
It is a conscious pause,
a moment to catch one's breath,
to reconnect, and to remember that life is still worth living. For our youth in particular,
entertainment must remain a space for recreation, not a permanent refuge.
For a people is not saved solely by dancing, but neither is it saved
by stifling all joy. Haiti's challenge, this Christmas 2025,
is to reconcile joy and responsibility,
celebration and conscience,
freedom and the pursuit of the common good. This is what it means to celebrate without exaggerating:
to rejoice without losing oneself,
to breathe without forgetting the insecurity, precarity, and instability that kill, wound, rape, steal, terrorize, and destabilize society, to celebrate without abandoning the essential. May this Christmas be a moment of human warmth, discreet solidarity,
measured joy,
of meditation and, above all, collective reflection. For after the celebration,
it will still be necessary to rise,
to think, to act, and to rebuild. The ABC Center calls for responsible joy, conscious freedom,
and active hope.
Evans Paul
Former Prime Minister
