Navidad
For those of you who always wanted to know what a Guatemalan Christmas is like, here is a brief description of our Christmas experience with our host family in Xela.
Christmas here appears to be mostly celebrated during the night of December 24th, called la Noche Buena. People gather with their families, eat tamales, set off firecrackers, and, at midnight, put baby Jesus in his spot in the nativity scene and open presents. They also go out to visit relatives and neighbors throughout the night, wishing everybody a merry Christmas. Then on the 25th they get up late and continue with the friend and relative visits.
Religious manifestations also seem to feature more or less prominently, depending on the family and their religions. Some processions do go around in the days around Christmas, but they appear to be a lot less popular here than in Antigua, where they are all the rage. Firecracker use, though extensive, is (thank god) also less prominent here than in Antigua, where people use them any day, with or without a reason, and at any time of the day, usually starting at about 5am.
Our Christmas program turned out to be pretty traditional: we gathered with the whole family (the older couple we are staying with, and the family of their five kids, about 25 of us altogether), ate fancy potato tamales (as opposed to the more pedestrian rice tamales), as well as lasagna, drank traditional hot pineapple juice, played with the kids, set off firecrackers out in the street, put a dozen (!) baby Jesuses in the huge nativity scene they had set up, opened some presents, and knelt down for a long, confused, crying prayer that we did not understand a word of.
A quick word about the Baby Jesus tradition here... People have little doll-like statues of Jesus, which they take out and dress up in the week before Christmas. The dresses, which I guess were originally supposed to look like fancy ancient costumes, have somehow evolved into fancy, frilly, lacy, girly baby-doll dresses. At midnight on Christmas, Jesus is undressed and put half naked in the manger where he belongs. Our family had the particularity of having a about a dozen Jesuses (one for each kid, apparently), including the centerpiece of sorts, a black Jesus belonging to the older son.
We had a good time sitting around with the family and playing with the kids, and opening our gifts; a woven bag in green for Matt and pink for me. Sitting and standing around in the cold cold night for hours does not go without consequences though... but you will hear about this in a future post...
