CHRISTMAS EVE AT TUMACACORI

IT'S A SPECIAL EVE AT TUMACACORI MISSION WHEN PEOPLE FROM ALL WALKS OF LIFE MAKE A CALL ON THE GHOSTS OF YULETIDE PAST

IN EVERY NIGHT OF THE YEAR BUT ONE, THE NATIONAL PARK SERVICE LOCKS the door and leaves the mission of San Jose de Tumacacori to the ghosts. The exception, appropriately, is Christmas Eve.

On that evening, the 172-year-old church stays open until 9 P.M., the chilled night air again rings with carols sung, and the architecture is haloed with the soft, haunting orange light of hundreds of luminarias.

Nick Bleser, a retired Tumacacori park ranger, says the tradition dates from around 1945 when neighbors from the homes and ranches around the mission would show up to light a Christmas tree, drink coffee, and visit. In 1971 the Park Service made it an official event, open to everyone, and it began drawing visitors from as far as Tucson, 50 miles away.

"It got so big," Bleser says, "that we were actually thinking about shutting it down. There were so many people jammed into the church that we were worried about fire, and we were finding some damage to the adobe walls."

Instead the Park Service three years ago began engineering a compromise. Carolers now rove outside, and several hundred visitors slowly file through the church, enjoying it in the candlelight and pondering what a Christmas Eve Mass might have looked and sounded like here nearly two centuries past.

Undoubtedly the carols would have been different. It's difficult to imagine the Tohono O'odham parishioners singing "Lo, How a Rose" in four-part Renaissance harmony, as do today's Tubac Singers, a community choir. And the candlelight wouldn't have been filtered through brown paper lunch sacks. But the image of the church outlined as a beacon in the indigo desert night seems perfectly consistent with the image its Franciscan builders had in mind. It was intended to evoke a sense of reverent awe among all who beheld it. It still does, even as a ruin, on a festive but pensive Christmas Eve.