Never in my life has my family sat down to watch a football game. When I was growing up, the factories on Sunday were closed, so our entire day was for the family side hustle; they were never about leisure.<\/p>\n
For a long time, I knew watching sports was exciting, but I couldn\u2019t really feel the draw. Football in particular was hard to understand, with plays that last only seconds and the jarring violence of giant men smashing into each other.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
This past September, after a rough weekend for the Bears, I asked a colleague what the point of sports fandom was if it seemed to bring more angst than joy. I expected her to say something about the spectacle or the merchandise or who knows what. Instead, her answer was simple. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s about community,\u201d she said \u2014 it\u2019s about losing yourself in something in which you get to share the full range of emotion with perfect strangers and feel like a big family, if only on game days.\u00a0<\/p>\n
So, this season, I gave it a try and started watching the Bears play on Sundays to see what all the fuss was about. What most surprised me was how the team seemed to reflect our city \u2014 tough and scrappy, getting that \u201cW\u201d just when all hope seemed lost. It has been beautiful to see my city embrace the Bears, and after just a few Sundays, I felt somehow more connected to anyone wearing blue and orange.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m lucky that the first football game I ever went to was the first Bears-Packers game at Soldier Field this season. The anxiety of being on the edge of my seat along with 60,000 other people was like nothing I\u2019d ever experienced.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Then those last three minutes of regular time \u2014 my dear Lord \u2014 it was like the stadium transformed, then, that winning touchdown in overtime! The energy swept me up, and, just weeks after skeptically watching my first game, I was jumping up and down with everyone, reveling in the joy and connection with each and every fan, player and Chicagoan. <\/p>\n
A few days later on Christmas Day, my cousins were watching football on their phones because my mom doesn\u2019t have a TV. Even though it wasn\u2019t the Bears playing, their magical season had us all too excited about the playoffs to miss a game. So I found a little TV in my mom\u2019s closet and set it up for everyone to enjoy the games together.<\/p>\n
As a Catholic immigrant family, we care a lot about baby Jesus. Every year, our baby Jesus gets a brand-new outfit, and we have our baby Jesus party.<\/p>\n
Despite Bears fever sweeping through the family, my mom hadn\u2019t quite caught the bug yet, and she decided that our baby Jesus party would be Jan. 10 in honor of my late grandfather. Now, don\u2019t get me wrong; I, too, am a devout follower of baby Jesus, but I\u2019m also a born-again Bears fan, and we had a major scheduling dilemma.<\/p>\n
We struck a compromise. I could make it to the baby Jesus party if they got a TV installed in time. The day of, I begged my family to please show up on time for prayers at 6 p.m. since we were playing the Packers at 7 p.m.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
My family is Mexican, so of course everyone was late. By the time we started praying, it was already halftime. We were down 3-21.<\/p>\n
Our Rosary took 45 minutes, and by the time we\u2019d said our last Hail Mary, Da Bears had staged a miraculous comeback, and we felt like baby Jesus was on our side.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Our cousins just over the border in Wisconsin kept up a steady stream of taunts, trash-talking the Bears and causing us all a lot of anxiety as the minutes ticked by. But by then, I was a (three-week) veteran Bears fan, essentially an expert. I knew better. I kept telling my Illinois family: \u201cIt\u2019s still possible, you have to believe!\u201d<\/p>\n
My entire family was cheering for the Bears that day. Even those who don\u2019t speak English were rooting for Los Azules. I don\u2019t know if my mom or aunts understood or cared much about the plays. I do know it brought them a lot of joy to see their adult kids happy, and they cheered along with us.<\/p>\n
When the Bears won, we were all jumping up and down. Just like the fans at Soldier Field three weeks earlier, you could feel the joy and connection. With each other, with our team, with our state.<\/p>\n
I had no idea that sports could spark such a fun and beautiful family moment. Afterward, we took celebratory mezcal shots and sent the video to our Wisconsinite cousins, friendly payback for the game-time taunts.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
We know being a Bears fan doesn\u2019t often bring you joy. But our team is part of our shared identity. Our team connects us to one another, to our city. No matter what\u2019s going on, that shared fandom says that we have a place and that this place is our home.<\/p>\n
This Sunday, we\u2019re having our first Super Bowl party with wings and guacamole and mezcal. Thanks to the Bears and, claro, Benito (Bad Bunny), for opening up something new for my immigrant family to enjoy.<\/p>\n
Even at a time when we can so often feel \u201cothered\u201d and rejected, we\u2019re finding acceptance through this great American pastime. Go, Bears.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Erendira Rendon is vice president of immigrant justice at The Resurrection Project.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here<\/a> or email letters@chicagotribune.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Never in my life has my family sat down to watch a football game. When I was growing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":737941,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2070],"tags":[70481,374,692,391,2493,7,6,505],"class_list":{"0":"post-737940","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago-bears","8":"tag-bad-bunny","9":"tag-bears","10":"tag-chicago","11":"tag-chicago-bears","12":"tag-chicagobears","13":"tag-football","14":"tag-nfl","15":"tag-super-bowl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116034951293840292","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=737940"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737940\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/737941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=737940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=737940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=737940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}