This post is named in honor of the book my parents bought me, sometime around 1st grade, when I asked them why we couldn’t have a Christmas tree like everyone else. This year however, I did even better than a Hanukkah bush—I got an actual Christmas tree, and an actual Christmas to go along with it!
Well, my program is officially over, and only a handful of us still remain in Guatemala. Some stayed on to travel, but as that option wasn’t really open to me (according to my most recent bank statement) my host family was kind enough to invite me to spend Christmas with them. (P.S. Mom, if you’re reading this, one of the girls hasn’t even bought a return ticket yet. See how good I am?)
Much like back home, the day of the 24th is spent making food preparations, phone calls to family, and of course, last minute shopping. However, since shopping malls don’t really exist, and are too expensive for your average Joe Guatemala anyway, all gift grabbing takes place in the country’s real commercial playground: the markets. Typically, the market registers somewhere around “culture-shock” on the over-stimulated-claustrophobic-o-meter. The week before Christmas, that gets kicked up to “spectacle,” and by Christmas Eve, it becomes “oppressive.” The streets are closed off to traffic and filled with venders and men with megaphones in no particular organized arrangement, and any remaining space is then packed with the multitudes. You actually can’t move at all. “Look at all the people Benjamín!,” shouted my host family as I dodged, sidestepped, and acrobated my way through the crowd to keep pace with them, carrying one of their newly-bought presents on my shoulder (and thus, two feet above the heads of most passersby).
Christmas here is more like New Years in the U.S. Around 7:00 or so everyone had a snack to hold us over, because dinner doesn’t come until after midnight. Around 10:00 we left to go make the rounds with extended family, and by 11:30 we had arrived at our final destination, the house of…I guess you would call them my host aunt and uncle? As soon as the clock struck 12, the city erupted in fireworks (very legal and very abundant) and the house into wrapping paper (they get a pretty good kick out of American kids giving Santa Claus the credit). The tradition for Christmas dinner is tomales de arroz, a rice and chicken dish of gruel-like consistency, cooked in banana leaves. And my host uncle, who doubles as a professional chef, served homemade cheesecake for dessert. After dinner we did the usual chit-chat, and made our way back home by 2 AM. The 25th, not surprisingly, was a much quieter affair, with a family lunch, and an especially heavy dose of Latino soap operas.
For any curious readers or Jewish mothers who happened to stumble upon this, you’ll be happy to know I did also celebrate Hanukkah this year. It involved a makeshift menorah made of plywood and Styrofoam, a collection of colorful candles found in the market (probably intended for Christmas), and matzo-meal-less latkes. Boo-ya.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
what a great way to celebrate christmas! And a thank you to all our friends who let us share in decorating their Christmas Trees, since you never had a hannukakah bush
i love how much our moms love commenting on our blogs whilst abroad. let's catch up upon return stateside :)
not sure you are still checking your blog--but i stumbled upon it when looking up the kachikil language having just returned from a trip to Lake Atitlan-retreat and immersion into the culture and Antigua and I fully agree that the language is a cross between Hebrew and Czech.....having had a respiratory infection while I was there, the throat congestion helped immensely....now what is a 60 year old very cool Jewish lady doing in this beautiful place-Santa Cruz at the Villasumaya--having been with a beautiful man who taught me so much about Mayan culture having visited Mexico every year....part of his ashes needed to go into Lake Atitlan and we had planned, but never got to an adventure there...a Mayan joven took me in his canoe, slighly wider than I and we both watched the ashes disappear into the lake...I got to torture the locals with my Spanish, too and they were very patient. I loved the families and the volcanoes which greeted me for one week. My dear Frank was in San Cristobel when the zappatistas took over and it was quite the experience .... and there are always many sides to a story as we found out spending a few visits to that city after the event.
I hope you still check this blog--your writing is wonderful...At a kind of coop-indoor in Antigua, there were two Mayan women selling their weavings and my friend and I looked at each other and were convinced that this woman was a member of the tribe with her English and bargaining skills....brutal!
Hope your life since has been as exciting.--Met several people on planes coming and going who were with medical volunteer groups --said the conditions were pretty bleak...but they were glad to be of assistance to those who were brave enough for western medicine....
Post a Comment