As you may remember from previous blog posts, I had a wonderful experience with my Guatemalan host family during my first 2 months of SALT, and they invited me to spend Christmas and New Years with them. Although Christmas in Guate is a lot different than Christmas back home, and I was missing snow and all my family and friends and Christmas traditions back home, I wasn’t homesick, thanks to the wonderful hospitality of the Kaehler family! I had a really amazing Christmas, and much better than I was expecting, considering only a couple weeks ago I had been feeling pretty homesick for a Canadian Christmas.
Now, how to describe a Guatemalan Christmas…
First of all, Christmas in
My host mom spent the days of the 23rd and the 24th busy in the kitchen making tons of food. The main traditional Guatemalan Christmas food is tamales, a delicious dish made of corn and rice. They are filled with pork, peppers, raisins, olives and a red tomato sauce with lots of yummy Guatemalan spices. Each individual “tamal” is wrapped up separately in banana leaves and tied up with a dried weed, and then cooked for at least 8 hours. My host mom made 110 of these – a lot of work!! She also made traditional Guatemalan punch, a fruit drink with fresh pineapples, apples and papayas, as well as spices, served hot. Another big part of Guatemalan Christmas are firecrackers. Although the big show is at midnight on Christmas Eve, all day and night on the 24th and 25th you could hear firecrackers and fireworks going off in the distance.
Christmas Eve is a big deal, so everyone gets dressed up for the evening. At around 7:00, aunts, uncles and cousins started arriving at our house, and the girl cousins and aunts got dressed up in their new clothes, and started doing their hair and makeup together. The extended Kaehler family (the family of my host dad) consists of 2 uncles, 5 aunts, 13 cousins (between the ages of 2 and 30), 2 boyfriends/fiancés, Diego’s son Josúe, and me, their Gringa/Canadian cousin! It was a full house! The evening consisted of lots of noise, laughter, and tons of food! The youngest Kaehler cousin, 2 year old Ceci, entertained the whole family with some Christmas dancing and singing, which was hilarious and super cute! The cousins had bought tons of different kinds of firecrackers, so we set some off before midnight, to test them out. I even got to set a few off, but only the smaller ones – my host brothers didn’t trust me with the bigger ones! Then at around 10:00 all the cousins and aunts and uncles left, because even though it had been quite the party and there was tons of food still left, this wasn’t the main event. We were invited to eat Christmas Dinner at 1 in the morning (crazy, eh??) at my host dad's sister's house. So everyone went home for a bit to rest up, before the real Christmas began, and to open their presents. When midnight came around, we all went outside to set off the rest of the firecrackers. It was crazy and very loud – there were lights and noises coming from every single direction in the streets, but it was a lot of fun, and there were some bigger fireworks shows that we could see off in the distance. Once the fireworks were done, and every family member and neighbour had given/received a Christmas hug and greeting, we went inside to open the Christmas presents. Most of the presents were for Josúe, Diego’s 7 year old son. But there were even 2 presents under the tree for me, which I wasn’t expecting! Then at aroud 12:30, once the presents were open, we headed to another part of the city to (finally!!) enjoy Christmas dinner with the extended Kaehler family again. Instead of all sitting down at the same time, it was kind of like eat whenever you are hungry. We had more of the Christmas punch, and our Christmas dinner consisted of pork with a delicious sauce, rice mixed with some vegetables and cream cheese (soooo yummy!!!) and a salad. There was more exchanging of gifts, mostly for the younger cousins, and then people just hung around in the living room, half of us talking, half of us sleeping! At 3 am we left to go back home, and by 4 am Christmas morning I was fast asleep.
Christmas Day I slept in until noon, and then had a lazy afternoon in my pyjamas. Some of the cousins had slept over at our house, so we played a bit of Dutch Blitz, which has become a popular card game in the Kaehler household. At about 4 pm, another aunt, uncle and cousin came over, and we had a “Christmas lunch” that my host mom had prepared. I’m not sure if this is something they do every year for Christmas Day, or if it was just because it was a Sunday and no one had to work. Plus my host mom loves cooking for others and is an amazing cook. Either way, it was a delicious meal, and nice to spend time with some of the extended family once more. We had pork again, this time with gravy, delicious mashed potatoes and veggies. And also some Egg Nog that I had bought from the grocery store, and was super excited about! Then once it got dark, the cousins and my host dad lit up some more firecrackers out in the street (along with the rest of
And that in a nutshell was my Guatemalan Christmas; filled with tons of delicious food but most importantly wonderful people, who have made me feel like another daughter/sister/niece/cousin in the family, even though I’m not even living in
 |
| my Guatemalan host nephew Josue, opening his Christmas presents |
 |
| my Guatemalan host sisters Karla and Carolina, all dressed up for the Christmas Eve festivities |
 |
| Setting off firecrackers at midnight on Christmas Eve! I was a little bit nervous at first, but it was actually a lot of fun. And most importantly, no one got hurt!! |
No comments:
Post a Comment