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A Nuyorican Child’s Christmas In Vieques (My First Tropical Christmas)

Christmas Day has come and gone, but the 12th day of Christmas, January 6th, has even more weight in some cultures. Epiphany, or Three Kings Day, a traditional Catholic holiday is celebrated on the 6th of January through much of Latin America -- and arguably, most so, on the island of Puerto Rico. Sanibel poet Joe Pacheco brings us this piece remembering his first tropical Christmas.

Joe Pacheco is a Puerto Rican from New York and a former New York City school superintendent, who was named Literary Artist of the Year in 2008 by the Alliance for the Arts. He writes a weekly poetry column for the Sanibel Islander, and one of his works specifically highlights the continuing Christmas celebration in Puerto Rico -- a celebration many of the 300,000 Puerto Ricans who fled to Florida after Hurricane Maria will now have to continue here.

Rachel Iacovone is a reporter and associate producer of Gulf Coast Live for WGCU News. Rachel came to WGCU as an intern in 2016, during the presidential race. She went on to cover Florida Gulf Coast University students at President Donald Trump's inauguration on Capitol Hill and Southwest Floridians in attendance at the following day's Women's March on Washington.Rachel was first contacted by WGCU when she was managing editor of FGCU's student-run media group, Eagle News. She helped take Eagle News from a weekly newspaper to a daily online publication with TV and radio branches within two years, winning the 2016 Society of Professional Journalists Mark of Excellence Award for Best Use of Multimedia in a cross-platform series she led for National Coming Out Day. She also won the Mark of Excellence Award for Feature Writing for her five-month coverage of an FGCU student's transition from male to female.As a WGCU reporter, she produced the first radio story in WGCU's Curious Gulf Coast project, which answered the question: Does SWFL Have More Cases of Pediatric Cancer?Rachel graduated from Florida Gulf Coast University with a bachelor's degree in journalism.