Christmas in The Tropics
by Yours Truly
Christmas in the tropics. Specifically in Merida,
that formerly white pearl in the rocky flatlands called Yucatan.
Christmas in this particular part of the tropics starts
soon, at least as far as the stores go, there not being a Thanksgiving
shopping frenzy to celebrate like in the good old U.S. of A. It starts
so early in fact, that in mid September you can begin to find a few Christmas
lights and some adornos sprinkled amongst the usual merchandise.
This always comes as a shock to me, since I've just shaken the last of
the sand out of my car's floormats (from the 2 month stint at the beach)
and have deposited the kiddies in school.
By the time the trees have made their appearance, stores
are going all out to sell their Christmas wares and by early December ie
6th or 7th, you won't find a real pino anywhere. This also happens
with the rest of the Christmas stuff. I dropped by Ace Hardware around
the 7th and they had absolutely nothing left except for a few esferas
and package or two of lights. Since local merchants don't want to have
an excess of inventory after the holiday season (post-Christmas bargain
sales being unheard of here) they only import or buy what they think they
can sell and then subtract a little. Everyone knows this so the locals
buy buy buy as fast as they can to avoid the no hay syndrome that
will soon follow. So if you don't have your tree, your really cool toys,
and your ornaments by early December, you'll be out of luck and the kids
won't get the latest goodies because Sears, Sams, Price, Ace, Chapur etc
only bought a few of each one.
In Merida itself, you won't see much of 'la rama' except in some of the colonias or barrios that are so-called populares. Popular in local lingo does not mean that everyone wants to live there; al contrario, it means poor but nobody really wants to call them that so they are called populares. This is a pet phrase of aspiring politicians who always cite the citizenry of the colonias populares when announcing grandiosos programas de asistencia social.
Those select and priveleged few in that special social class that has gone to Miami or Houston to do their Christmas shopping will go to mass, but their kids wouldn't be caught dead singing la rama (que oso) it's much easier just to ask papito for some money.
Another tradition that is disconcerting to those of us
who drive along the Merida-Progreso highway due to the slow moving vehicles
and flashing lights, is the nocturnal Guadalupana running thing.
Groups of jovenes or young people take turns running/jogging the
length of the highway, torch in hand, followed and preceded by slow moving
trucks loaded with more runners cheering them on and bedecked with imagenes
of
the Virgen de Guadalupe.
In case you're wondering, there are many cocinas economicas and not so economicas that will prepare food for you all year round and these places are busy busy busy during special seasons like Hanal Pix'an, Christmas etc. So if you're well off, part of the clase acomodada, but not so acomodada that you have your own cook or chef, you visit places like Minelia's who make great food to go and that way you don't do much in the way of meal preparation except buy some turrones or other sweets like dried fruit (dates, figs or a fruitcake etc.) perhaps at San Francisco or Super Maz. If you like your fruitcake really aged, Carrefour has one that they've been trying to sell since they opened a couple of years ago, so it should be nicely aged by now. Look in the freezer section.
Other holiday treats that figure importantly on the menu
during this season are:
In Merida there isn't much of this kind of thing. Christmas music (heard in the malls and on the radio) is limited to disco/dance remixes of American and Spanish carols sung by popular 'artists' such as the multi-talented Tatiana, or, on the more cultural side of the musical spectrum, there are the little kids choirs that are really off-key singing, again, spanish translations of American or English or even German Christmas carols, or Spanish villancicos. This is the type of music that would make my former choir teacher screech and the hair raising equivalent of running your nails down the blackboard. But, anything musical with kids, however corny, is considered cute (ay que lindo) especially among the chilangos, who adore this sort of stuff.
Someone was explaining to me the other day that there are no real Mexican Christmas carols and no real history of Christmas music per se, with the permutations and mutations found in the U.S. for example. (How many remakes and re-recordings of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer are there anyway?) Maybe that's why Christmas music isn't such a big deal here. In any case, good holiday music is one of the things a neurotic foreigner like me misses at Christmastime.
Whatever. Christmas is a time to be with your family,
so wherever they are, that is the best place to be. While I miss a few
things from home, like the food, the music and above all the COLD!, I sure
don't miss shoveling snow out of the driveway, scraping frost off my car
windshield with a credit card, or stomping through 3 feet of the white
stuff to get to the bus station where I can ride in steamy, germ-filled
warmth with 30 other stranded motorists and assorted wierdos to my destination.
