Thursday, December 25, 2014

Navidad en México

Christmas is celebrated a little differently here in Mexico. People start 9 days before Christmas with posadas, which literally means hotel or inn in Spanish. They happen every night for 9 nights leading up to Christmas. Christmas Eve is the last night of the posadas. Posadas are a ritual re-enactment of Mary and Joseph’s search for lodging in Bethlehem. People host them in there houses and neighborhoods also host them. It involves singing, similar to caroling. There’s a certain song that is sung back-and-forth between the people inside the house and outside the house. At the end, the people inside open the door and invite the people outside into the house. There is usually food and drink such as ponche (hot fruit punch) and aguinaldos (goody-bags filled with fruit or candy). To celebrate the arrival of the pilgrims, everyone hits a piñata or two. The typical shape is a circle with 7 points, signifying the 7 deadly sins. It’s broken to show overcoming evil and the candy or fruit inside are the prize for keeping faith. There’s also a song that’s sung while each person takes a turn hitting the piñata:

“Dale, dale, dale, no perdas el tino, 
porque si lo perdes, pierdes el camino. 
Esta piñata es de muchas mañas, sólo contiene naranjas y cañas.”
Hit, hit, hit. 
Don’t lose your aim, 
Because if you lose, you lose the road. 
This piñata is much manna, only contains oranges and sugar cane.”


When I went to the neighborhood posada, there were hundreds of people waiting outside a home. Then a procession carrying statues of Mary and Joseph covered in garlands and lights arrived from around the corner and stopped outside the home. Each night they went to a different street and celebrated with the neighbors from that street. The procession of people sang to the people inside the house and they rested the statues outside the home for people to honor. Then we all formed lines to receive the aguinaldos. Earlier in the week, people from the neighborhood donated fruit for the aguinaldos. Inside was a variety of fruit such as oranges, sugar cane, peanuts, and mandarins. Then we waited for ponche. There was a band setting up at the end of the street, getting ready to perform and have people dance. While the band set up, people hung a piñata above the street and children took turns hitting it.

This is my first year being away from my family for Christmas. My mentor was generous enough to take me in for the holidays. We went to her hometown of Atlacomulco on Christmas Eve. We ate lunch at 3 when we arrived and continued to cook for the big Christmas Eve dinner. At 7:30, we went to her grandmother’s house. We being me, Gabby, her parents, her younger sister, her older sister and the husband and three daughters of her older sister. There was already other family members that had arrived before us. There were 16 of us in total. Before dinner we opened presents. One person opened a present at a time. After each gift was opened, we applauded and said “Bravo!”. In my family, we all open all of ours at the same time so it usually goes pretty quickly. Gabby’s family bought me a Frida Kahlo frame. It has glitter. It’s awesome. Everyone chatted for a couple hours then ate around 11:15PM. We had turkey stuffed with a meat concoction, bread, a chilled veggie salad, and a couple of fruit salads which are known as “ensaladas de Nochebuena” (Christmas Eve salads). One was like a Hawaiian salad with fruit and cream. The other was colored by beet juice. I made my favorite holiday dish: candied yams. There was none left so I think it’s safe to say that people enjoyed it. Everything was delicious. For dessert we had a wreath-shaped jello. Jello is really popular here in Mexico. The flavor of the one we had on Christmas Eve was cappuccino and marshmallow. We left around 1:30AM and went to another family member’s house to greet them. We “greeted” them until 3:30AM. But we also ate more dessert and sang karaoke. I sang a song I had never heard of about finding love in a bazaar. It was from the 80s. I killed it. No big deal.


On Christmas Day, we went back to Toluca to celebrate with Mariano’s family (Gabby’s boyfriend and my Mexican father-figure). We went to his aunt’s house and I swear every person that walked in was his aunt or uncle. There were 18 of us and the majority were aunts or uncles. We spanned across the whole living room and dining room. Two of his aunts lived in the house and served us a course at a time. First was Mexican rice. Chris would have been in heaven. Then we had bacalao, which is cod. It was served shredded with potatoes and vegetables. The final course was a cactus dish. Cactus is common here in Mexico and actually quite tasty. This dish had a little kick to it but I was able to eat it. My stomach can’t handle foods that are too spicy. For dessert we had strawberry cake and chocolate cake filled with the best chocolate crème I’ve ever tasted in my life.


When we drove back to Gabby’s house in Atlacomulco when we finished eating to celebrate with her immediate family. We played a grab-bag game where you had to guess who bought you a gift. Each person in the family only bought one gift for another person. If you guessed your gift-giver correctly, you could open your gift. If not, you had to take a shot of vodka. I’m sorry to say that I guessed wrong multiple times. Thankfully, the limit was two shots. And they were baby shots. Gabby gave me a beautiful blue scarf. Another family tradition of there is to take a picture with the person who gave you the gift before you open it. I also saw this picture-taking tradition when I went to another Christmas party earlier in December. For dinner, we feasted on leftovers from Christmas Eve. We had fruit salads and turkey sandwiches. I love leftovers.

I’m so thankful that Gabby invited me to celebrate Christmas with her family. They were all so welcoming, just as they were on Mexican Independence Day in September. They said that their home is my home and I can come whenever I want. Mexican hospitality is unbelievably wonderful.

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