To be perfectly honest, it's always been hard for me to get into the "Christmas spirit". (My family refers to me as the Grinch.) This year was even more difficult. I suppose because I grew up in Maine, I associate snow with Christmas. Believe me, there is no snow here in Honduras, which is actually something I am really coming to appreciate the older I get.
On top of that we have no Christmas tree this year. In past years we would always go out on our own property and cut a tree. Here it is illegal to cut pines without a permit, so all trees are the plastic version. The main reason we had no tree though is because we moved to a new house last weekend.
So here it is, Christmas morning, sun brightly shining, no presents await us under the tree and we have been up half the night. Here in Honduras, and probably all Central America, the tradition is to stay up very late visiting and lighting off fireworks and firecrackers. The whole city erupted in noise at midnight. We were at the home of friends last night and their house sits on a hill over looking Sigautepeque. From this vantage point we were able to look down on and across the city and the fireworks. It was actually very beautiful. The moon, although only half, had just risen over the mountains and was beautiful. A light fog, or maybe a haze from the fireworks, lay over the city and we could see the twinkling of the lights through it.
Fireworks are a huge part of the Christmas/New Year season in Central America. I still remember, quite vividly, my first experience of a Central American Christmas. It was 1980 and I was seventeen years old. We had been living in Antigua, Guatemala for several months already and I went down to the beautiful central park to watch the festivities. A man with a pyramidal shaped, bamboo rack over his head and shoulders, laden with lighted fireworks charged into the middle of the crowded park. Fireworks were exploding in every direction. People were screaming and running. I hit the deck, covering my head and ears as I was enveloped in a blaze of sound and light. There are a lot of people who question the truth of this story, but believe me, I was there. It was a one of a kind experience.
Another tradition here at Christmas are tamales. Barbe spent half of the day yesterday in the house of friends, they are actually more like family to us, learning how to make tamales in the traditional style, wrapped in banana leaves. Later, we went back to share a meal with them.
One of the things we are learning as we adjust to living here is that the nostalgia of what used to be, whether it is food, family, traditions or memories, can be a hard sentiment to deal with at times. We love it here in Honduras and we love the new friends and the new life we are building, but this Christmas, the not having snow, not being at our friends Blue and Lisa's traditional Christmas Eve party with so many people we have so many memories with, even the hustle and bustle of last minute shopping at Walmart was missed.
Next year we will have new memories and be starting new traditions, but this year we felt the loss of the things we left behind. It was by no means an unbearable or even an overly sad time and I am finding that it is good and healthy to miss all these things. How sad life would be if we did not have these memories to miss.
So, from the Grinch here in Honduras...Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
No comments:
Post a Comment