As I have frequently told my family and have probably written on my blog as well, this is my first winter not snow skiing since I was 2 or 3. What makes that fact pertinent to this blogpost is that skiing has become our family’s means of celebrating Christmas and is probably the most prominent tradition we have (next to the Turkey Trot…). Therefore, it was surprising not to ski for Christmas… especially since it is SO COLD here that I feel like I’m skiing. (Okay, okay.. so it’s really not that cold… the coldest at night it’s been was 5 below (C), but without heating in the house, that is really cold!)
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| El Baul |
But, the Christmas traditions here are so fascinating and fun that I didn’t have too much time to lament my lack of opportunities for fluffy white faceplants (Congrats to my Mom and Dad who both received their Christmas falls this year!). There are the traditions that are more prominently catholic that my family didn’t participate in, but I got to witness… Posadas (9 days of going house to house in a procession fit with a donkey reinacting the rejection at the Inn), lots of Day of the Devil things (refer here), and the Christmas day tradition of walking with a drummer boy (or a few), a baby (doll or real), and lots of people down the street… I never was exactly clear on the destination, but it was cool!
Our family followed all the other traditions (or at least those traditions that I know of) and they created three pretty fun days! On the 23rd, my host mom realized that she was lacking a lot (all) of the gift shopping, so she was off pretty much all day in the horribly crazy, street closing, therefore Katharine not able to find her bus market. That night, we went to the Christmas Eve service at the church (yes, we all realized that it was a day early). The kids had a Nativity Scene of sorts which was definitely Guatemalan style: 2 kids lip synced to a hip hop song called, “Creere”(I will believe). Then, there was a song that a chorus sung while Joseph (age 6 and more of a cute visual accessory), Mary (around 12 and dressed in rainbow sheets with a blue bandana on her head, and Gabriel the angel (a totally sweet all white angel costume) danced to another song while a crew of kids sang along. Then, we had a regular church service and sung some Christmas hymns. I loved singing and hearing “O, Come All Ye Faithful” and “Silent Night” in Spanish. It was also really great to be at a Christmas Eve service just to be there. I wasn’t moving chairs, setting up the computer, organizing kids, or being a kid in the pageant. I was simply there to listen, to learn, and to remember. I think it was my first Christmas Eve to do so. In this way, I felt a lot like the Shepherds that first Christmas. They were just there. They didn’t really know what they were getting themselves into. They didn’t know how long they would stay. They just went and stood in awe at Jesus. Even better, they were fearful, and that was okay. (They were also probably cold and so were we in the church… I definitely have a whole new appreciation for that night)
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| The kids with their fire |
Christmas Eve itself was rather uneventful. The 4 year-old and I hung out all morning while everyone else finished their shopping. She was incredibly excited to open presents and didn’t let me forget it, but we had a good time. That night, we all headed over to the Abuelo’s (grandpa’s) house to hang out with my host mom’s entire extended family. The kids quickly disappeared and later on, I was curious where they went off to and when I found them, they were playing around a giant bonfire that they had made. I went inside and asked if it was tradition for kids to be playing around a large fire on Christmas Eve and the parents just laughed totally unconcerned. I guess the answer is yes. The main objective of the fire was to light more fireworks with it, and they sure did! We played with fireworks pretty much all night until midnight.
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| More fireworks! |
Then at midnight, the fun and games vanished and it was time for serious fireworks. The entire town was suddenly a warzone, filled with smoke and lights and booms. Fireworks here are cheap and easy to get (aka people sell them in the streets to cars that are stopped at stoplights), therefore they are plentiful. It was probably a solid hour of constant booms – the girls and I were constantly watching big, bright lights everywhere while dodging our family members who were setting off explosives all around us.
After we froze and the fireworks calmed down a bit, everyone went inside and we exchanged presents. The kids were exhausted, but quickly perked up after a bunch of fire and then receiving gifts. Then, around 1:30, we headed home (to the sound of still more boombas).
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| Cool, cool slides! (this is about 1/2 the length) |
Christmas morning we slept in. Late. Then, it was family day plus the surprise tradition of… (you guessed it)… more explosives! Evidently, for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day (as well as New Years), you explode fireworks excessively at midnight and noon. Later in the afternoon, the girls, my host dad, and I went to El Baul, a city park up in the mountains. It was awesome. There were a ton of people there, enjoying each other in their time off, but we got to go down the slides, see the (smoky) city from the hill, and it was my first time to see the park. It’s so cool!
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| Merry Christmas! |
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