Our Guate Christmas

This year we opted for a village Christmas. While we like to run around and visit other parts of Guatemala, see the sites and get to know the country as a whole, we feel like our host family is sad every time we leave. This year we decided, since we’d just gone a long trip to the states, that staying here with our host family was a great idea. We could spend some days at home working on things that are usually ignored or put off by our regular work schedule and we could enjoy the festivities that interrupted that work schedule.

On the 23rd we went to one of the last nights of the Posada. The word posada literally means “inn”, and the word here is used to describe the reinacting of Mary and Joseph’s journey to Bethlehem for the census. I’m not sure when this begins, if it’s the beginning of advent or if there’s a specific day in the church calendar here, but once it begins, there’s a small altar with Mary and Joseph, dressed in the local indigenous traje, that travels every day to a different house in the community. The long procession of villagers begins wherever the altar has stayed the night before, and travels to the next house where it will stay the coming night. They carry burning frankinscence and little boys carry two turtle shells they use as a kind of drum. I’m not sure where the tradition of the turtle shell comes from, but it does sound like the clippity-clop of donkeys hooves, which is the way Mary traveled, so they say. A band of musicians walks with the procession while another group is already inside the house of the processions destination. Once everyone arrives at the house, the musicians outside the house knock at the door and sing a song asking if they can come in and sleep for the night. The musicians inside sing a tune back, giving them permission to come in. Once inside, there are readings and reflection questions–advent preparations for the coming of Christ. When that’s all over, out come the snacks! Last year we just got sweet bread and atol, but this year we had full-on mini tamales and pineapple punch– fancy. And all the musicians sing Christmas carols while the rest of the crowd eats.

The whole thing takes 3 or 4 hours, which is why I’m glad we only went to one, because doing this every day for weeks could get pretty tedious. At this particular one the prayer leader, who was very happy to have us there, decided to say everything in Spanish for us and then Q’anjob’al for the rest of the folks, which was very nice of him, and made everything take even longer. We walked home in the dark and cold, happy we went and happy to rest in the quiet and warm of our little clubhouse.

The 24th started out as a fairly quiet day. Fletch and I made something like 300 cookies throughout the week, and by Thursday morning the only thing left as far as cookies were concerned was the decoration of all the gingerbread cutouts. We had four different kinds of cookies–nutmeg logs, peppermint chip cookies, chocolate crackles, and gingerbread (not much compared to the quantities and types my family manages to make at home, but we were pleased with our efforts in adverse conditions: ). I whipped out a ziplock bag, snipped the tinniest hole in the corner of the bag, and got to work decorating. As frequently happens, Chali and Alberto came knocking minutes after I started, so they came in and I showed them how to decorate the cookies. They were pretty excited to take their turns. Not long after that the littlest kids– Michelle, Delvin and Delmi–stopped in for their morning visit to the Christmas tree. Christmas felt well underway.

Once the cookies were done and left to dry I decided to head over to the neighbors house and check out how the tamale making was going. This is one of the days of the year where the biggest pots in town come out; Nas’s family even bought an extra one the week before from a wandering door-to-door salesman. All the women in the house were busy with one task or another. Some had to cook the corn dough, the others were boiling tomatos and roasting the spices, others toasting the leaves that were to wrap all the tamales, and others cooking the meat, the crowning jewel that goes in the center. They showed me how everything was put together. I watched Lina, the family matriarch, squish pieces of meat dipped in the spice sauce into the middle of the dough pile in the center of the leaves, and lick her fingers between each one. It made me laugh. They gave me the easiest of jobs, placing the prepared, wrapped and tied tamales in the big pot. I couldn’t possible mess that up, heh. They had hours of work still ahead of them, but they told me the lunch tamales would be ready a little behind schedule, at 1:00 rather than noon. I decided to go home and rest. The smoke in their house was crazy since the cooking fires were going full force.

Almost exactly on time, one of the kids came to tell us the tamales were ready, and over we went. The tamales of the Palas family were enormous, so that they struck fear in my heart at the thought of being gifted numerous tamales from other families and having to eat them ALL. The day before, in a casual conversation with Galindo, I asked him if the families all made their tamales differently. He told me no. He was wrong. Turns out Lina just likes making huge tamales, and Nas appears to love eating them. The family made half of theirs out of a pig Fletch had helped slaughter the day before, and the other half out of chicken. The families who did gift us tamales made some of chicken and some of turkey, and those that came from Manuel’s wife, also named Lina, were much spicier than the others. She used coban chili, a very spicy, smoked, delicious choice for tamales. All the tamales brought to our house were about half the size of those we ate with our family, whew. All the families send tamales to their neighbors and friends, but it’s almost like a trading game. At first this confused me, but later Nas began to explain. “We’re used to putting up with being hungry here, but on these two days of the year, no one is hungry. Everyone eats and eats and eats, and there’s meat.” I realized, the trading is more of a symbolic thing. For example, a poor family could send one tortilla to a family that gave them four or five. The point is 1) to share, and 2) to make sure that everyone has enough to eat. We certainly had plenty.

In the afternoon we decided to go out caroling. This was not a spur of the moment decision. Don Marcos, in the course of constructing his composting latrine, found out that Fletch plays the guitar. Once the construction was done, Marcos showed up at our house with a guitar to lend. He said it belonged to his son who is in the states and that Fletch should use it while he’s here and leave it with Marcos again when we go. So we decided to learn how to play and sing Oh Holy Night and go to the closest houses of families we see most frequently, to sing and pass out cookies. Unfortunately, Marcos and his family spent the holidy in Barrillas, so we didn’t get to go visit them as we’d planned. Manuel and Lina, our neighbor Petlon (mother of ten and maker of morrales for the co-op), and Nas and his Lina plus their children, all seemed to be fans of our little cookie-and-music parade. We saved our host family, and the bulk of the cookies, for last and sang for them at dinner time. When we unveiled the entire tray of cookies, they asked, “Is this all for us, or do you two want some too?” We told them they could eat them all, and everyone swooped down on the tray like pigeons in the park. They were gone in no time.

The nice thing about Christmas here, as with our family in the states, is that everyone is just in a good mood, happy to be together with the excuse of celebrating. We’d heard that fireworks were going to be part of the night, and we’d purchased some big surprise ones in town earlier in the week. As the tamales and cookies disappeared, everyone’s attention went to fireworks. Nas whipped out some big bills and called for more; Galindo and Rigo ran to the nearest store to buy even MORE fireworks. Suddenly I felt like maybe we didn’t purchase enough ourselves, so I sent Fletch off to get us some additional fireworks as well. We didn’t want run out before everyone else! He came back from the store laughing hysterically, all of his pockets stuffed with fireworks. Now, did I mention we were sitting in our host family’s kitchen, around an open fire? The boys handed everything over to Lina, sitting right next to the fire. I thought, this could be a disaster! I laughed mostly to myself as she patiently counted out every single sparkler, fountain, bumblebee, and Roman candle then put them in little piles to redistribute to all the kids. Chali and Alberto grabbed burning logs from the fire and ran outside to light up their loot. The festivities had begun. We joined in lighting up some of ours until it was decided at about 7 o’clock that all the rest should be saved for the big festivities at midnight. Everyone in the family went to settle into bed so they could wake up at midnight, and we went home to bite the heads off our gingerbread men and watch movies until the appointed hour. There was no way I’d be able to wake up if I went to sleep.

The second movie finished up about 10 minutes before midnight, so we went over to wake up the kids. Chali and Alberto had decided to sleep next door instead of at home with their parents, as we’d told them we’d bought a big surprise for them at midnight. Once the kids started to wake up, the rest of us ran up the hill to where we’d get the best view, and watched as the valley lit up, end to end as well on the mountainside across from us. Giant booming bombas and rockets streaked up into the sky, whistlers were zooming all over, Roman candles spat off different colored flames, and sparklers were handed out all around. It was quite festive. Reyna said she hadn’t gotten up at midnight in years, but this year she was going to be up with us, and she was true to her word. Nas woke up and stood at the door of the house watching out over his kids and grandchildren with a sleepy smile on his face. Midway through the fireworks, everyone paused a second to exchange hugs and Feliz Navidad greetings, then went back to lighting things up. “And this big one you said you had?” Reyna asked. Fletch went to light it up. It was fantastic. Fletch and I were laughing hysterically, the kids were mesmerized. The colors were brilliant. We’d gotten the second biggest one at the store, one that would probably be illegal in most states in the US. Once it was over, though, we were a little regretful we hadn’t gone for the BIGGEST. It was fun anyway. As we were going to go to bed, Manuel’s daughter showed up to invite us over to their house for some midnight tamales too, so we went. We didn’t get to bed until about 2 am.

Christmas day, as well as the weekend for that matter, we used for a little bit of work on things like the garden and a lot for catching up on sleep and projects. Now it’s back to work for us, for a few days anyway before we venture out to meet up with other volunteers for New Years celebrations. But we did get one nice Christmas card, that Fletch wants to share with you.