A Few of My Favorite Things

It’s 11 am. I just finished breakfast, and there are white-out fog conditions outside. I keep reading the news of snowstorms at home. Facebook posts are full of complaints regarding flight delays. I must say, I’m kind of jealous. If I could be bundled up and taking a snow walk or making a snowman, or watching the snow fall while knitting in front of a fireplace, I’d be happy as clam. That’s not to say I’m unhappy here. It’s just a very different Christmas this year.

We’ve had so many invitations since we’re not going back to the states, and we’ve decided the right thing to do is stay home, make a little Christmas here and share with our host family. We love them, so why leave them? Last week after we finished up our crazy big days of work we decided we’d better get some Christmas decorations and get in the mood.

Now, anyone who knows me well knows I love Christmas trees, and not just any old Christmas trees, I’m talking a real pine chopped down and set up in the living room. It makes the whole house smell delicious, and there’s something magical about having this big living tree in your living room. And the other thing–I strongly dislike fake plastic trees. I’ve planted enough trees (and plan to continue to plant trees) so that throughout my life there is a net positive of trees I’ve planted rather than cut down. But here in Guatemala it’s illegal to cut down a whole tree. Theses folks hover dangerously on the edge of a pretty big deforestation problem, because they cook with wood they get from the forest. We considered chopping off some branches to decorate our house, but something more appropriate and more hilarious came up. The thing about Guatemala is that their decorating style is a lot of flash and pizazz on the the outside, but not a lot of functionality and substance on the inside. Their houses, for example, have fun flourishes, colors, painting schemes, and on the inside they’re frequently almost entirely empty. So we debated for a time and decided the right thing to do for our Guatemalan Christmas was to buy a plastic Christmas tree (the one and only in my lifetime, I hope). ‘Tis the season…for me to be a hypocrite as I’ve said this is a thing I will never do, and now it’s done. It’ll be something nice to gift to the next volunteer here. Also, it goes so well with the decorated felt “stockings” one of the girls from Fletch’s training host family made for us. They’re very cute, but definitely one-sided so we can not fill them.

We went to town and checked out what the stores were offering. We tend to shop at stores where people are nice to us, because it makes it a more pleasant experience. There is one pharmacy in particular, the Farmacia San Bartolo (owned by a man named Bartolo) with a plethora of daughters, something like 10 of them (even more than can be seen in the picture), and every time we show up a lot of squealing and laughter ensues. This time we were attacked with hugs. The younger girls were selling wares from tables in the street, and were more than happy to show us all the lights available for our house or tree, and all their functions. It’s difficult to find static lights and lights that DON’T play music. Crazy flashing lights, running lights, lights that dim off and on timed intervals while playing (often out of tune) Christmas music are all very popular. We decided on a Christmas tree that would fit under the window in our house, and lights that were inside of red, blue, green, and gold balls with stars stamped out all around them–they served double duty as ornaments and lights, and I purchased a small box of ball ornaments from another store down the road, where we were invited over for a Christmas tamales should we come into Santa Eulalia on 24th or 25th.

The day we bought all the decorations was the same day as our big maternal mortality workshop. By the time we got home, we were beat, but the always-on-guard gang of kids that hang around our house saw us get off the microbus and walk up the path with boxes and bags. This is their cue to come stand in our door and watch us unpack everything.

Once the house was in order, we invited them in for the unveiling of the tree. Chali jumped right in and put the whole thing together, grabbed the lights and strung them up with only minimal help from me. I was feeling a little bummed, as I love decorating the tree, and once it was up kids were tripping over each other running the 4 feet from the tree to our bed to pick up another ornament and throw it on, nearly tearing the tree down with each ornament they hung. It was kind of funny and ridiculous. They were so very excited. I was just waiting for the first time the tree would fall over. It did. We picked it back up, replaced the ornaments. “You should tie this tree to the wall,” Chali said– exactly what I was thinking. Chali always gets points for being a smart kid. My whole life my dad has secured our Christmas tree with florist’s wire wrapped around hook in the ceiling. The hook is white, like the ceiling, and stays there all year. When the Jaimster and I got our first apartment, we could not stabilize our tree no matter how we tried, so it ended up tied to the wall. It just seems like the smart thing to do.

My nieces and nephews in the states, who weren’t expecting that we’d surprise them by coming home last year, decorated a set of wooden ornaments for us, half of which are picture frames for them to put their school pictures in. I brought them back after last Christmas, even though it felt a little bit excessive, to save for this year. The kids were enthralled when I pulled those out. There are snowmen, penguins, reindeer, elves, trains, all sorts of things they’ve never seen or heard about, so we tried our best to explain what each ornament is. After we finished, I asked if anyone wanted to hear a story. Our friend, Karen the linguist, sent us a few books in Spanish, including “How the Grinch Stole Christmas”. Chali, Alberto, and Yojana were absolutely enthralled. The littler kids got bored and left.

Sometimes I think I do these things, reading to the kids, because it makes me feel good, but this time I think all four of us had a good time. Reading a Christmas book just seemed right. My mom collects Christmas books. There’s a basket full of them that comes out in December for all holiday reading, and every time I visit them over the holidays I find myself reading children’s Christmas books to myself long after the nieces and nephews have moved on. So at least I have one book with me this year.

The day we brought in the tree was also the beginning of a 3 day celebration of the Virgin de Guadalupe. Last year I explained the importance of the Virgin here in our village. The local Catholic church is named for her, so it’s their celebratory feast day. Friday night was the night of the torritos. For those of you who’ve missed earlier posts on this funny little activity, let me explain. The torritos, or little bulls, are wood-and-cardboard boxes with a bull face attached to the front, and placed over the top half of a guy. He runs around a designated area, in a sort of mocking way “provoked” by a bull-fighter. It’s similar to their mocking dance of the conquistadores, but the catch is, the box that makes up the bull has tons of fireworks attached to it. Dangerous? Yes. Hilarious? Yes. For some reason, the fireworks are always lit from a cigarette the men smoke on the sidelines. There isn’t a lot of cigarette smoking here, but during festivals they always come out. It’s like there’s some unspoken rule that you can ONLY light your firecrackers with a cigarette (except during the Health Fair, haha). The activity takes place at about sundown. The firecrackers shoot off wildly into the crowd, and when they happen to fly directly in to the giant Christmas tree (made of cut branches laid over a frame and spray painted green so that your tree doesn’t turn brown before Christmas) there is a group of masked characters who jump and stomp and pound out any erupting flames. So many things here shout WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! I can’t help but think, “this would never fly in the states.” That’s part of why it’s funny, but also sometimes it makes me think maybe we are just a little too uptight sometimes? I know, I know, it’s all about risk reduction. It dawned on me that this activity was a perfect mix of two of my favorite things–Christmas trees AND fireworks. And it was a beautiful evening in the village to watch the sun go down. Here’s a peaceful picture of the mountains at night, looking out into the distance from all the craziness happening in the churchyard below.

Next week we start baking Christmas cookies. We made a trip to the departmental capital last weekend to load up on hard-to-get ingredients like butter and canola oil. We didn’t anticipate not being able to find peppermint candy canes, but for some reason they only had candy canes that were chocolate mint or watermelon flavored. Fletch doesn’t get any peppermint patties this year. We’re still going to do gingerbread and nutmeg logs though; we secured the rum and molasses necessary for these two.

It’s tradition here that people go house to house for visits on the 24th and 25th, sharing tamales. We’re going to share cookies and hot cocoa I think–not sure how it’ll work out, but we’re going to try it. I don’t know how many tamales we’re going to be expected to eat. I think they’re tasty, but they’re so very filling… we might explode.

And finally, another of my favorite things, CHICKENS! Our three new chickens are great. They come home every night, and spend a lot of the day wandering not too far from the house. But the best part? Two of the three are laying eggs here at the house. We were getting one egg every other day, but on Thursday, Whitey laid her first egg, and Henley II has started laying one a day instead of every other day, so now we’re getting at least one a day and sometimes too. There’s a lot of egg laying songs happening around our house, and it’s pretty funny. All these eggs will be very handy for the cookie baking coming up.

I hope everyone is enjoying the season in your own favorite ways. I know we were just home, but Christmas always makes me miss friends and family. We’re thinking of you all down here.