Stray bullets (and other forms of happiness)

I have spent Christmas and New Year's eve in Colombia, after having missed both last year. This kind of holidays are certainly quite unique here; in the cold, snowy first world you can hardly feel the warm celebrations you can see here. It is hard to describe the feeling:  you've got to see it with your own eyes.

In a country such as Colombia these celebrations have their downsides. Oddly enough, getting together to celebrate can be quite risky. It turns out that in this period families get together, in many cases for the only time in the year. This can be quite dangerous: the mix of alcohol and old animosities within the family can turn a happy reunion into a violent fight. This year, authorities have observed an increase in the number of conflicts which are solved in a violent way, often with deadly consequences. This is not guerilla or drug dealers who conspire against Christmas: they're normal, decent people who get drunk, get irrational, and do stupid things. Stupid things such as hurting / fighting with / killing your neighbor, your cousin, the guy who stared at your girlfriend. You see, life can be quite fragile here. A very similar phenomenon is observed every year the second sunday of May, during Mother's day.

Life can be fragile, indeed. Something particularly common in Colombia are stray bullets. These holidays there has been a huge amount of people dying because of them.  Or at least that's the message media has been trying to convey in every possible way: they've been particularly eager to register the cases in which kids are involved, for instance. The other day almost the whole newscast was devoted to people dead because of stray bullets. You might wonder where all these bullets come from. In normal circumstances, they come from the encounters between the police and urban gangs, which most times occur inside neighborhoods. (It is safe to say that most Colombians know how to recognize the sound of a gunshot from that of, for instance, certain kinds of fireworks that produce a similar effect.) However, the number of stray bullets increases dramatically during Christmas and New Year's eve. You see, in Colombia shooting to the sky with a gun is a socially acceptable way of showing your happiness. Needless to say, not everyone has a gun and does this. But there are way too many guns in the wrong hands, and everyday many die because of stray bullets. I am not able to give a rational explanation of how shooting to the sky (and thus inadvertently killing a distant someone) is related to happiness. It is a way of demonstrating power, and some people can feel happy of being feared, I guess.

Not everything about the holidays in Colombia is violent or negative, of course. For instance, it has been observed that natality rates during September/October are higher than during the other months of the year. This means that many children are conceived during the Christmas period, a clear evidence that getting together with your beloved ones does not necessarily imply a risk.