Christmastime in Honduras

Despite the fact that temps during the day are routinely in the 80s and there’s no snow in the extended forecast… Christmastime is here. It doesn’t seem possible most days, probably because we don’t have those normal markers of the approaching holiday like finals week, cold, snow, shopping, etc, but we’re making the best of it. We assembled and decorated our tree the night we returned from our trip, and not to brag or anything, but it looks pretty sweet. Christmas lights are harder to come by here, but we found some to hang on the tree and in the living room. We were very disappointed to find though that the lights here are not made with the same quality as they are at home. Only one strand of 4 worked, while the others had faulty plugs and wires popping out of random places. Sean however, was excited to take on the task of repairing these lights, and after a couple of hours, a few minor electrical shocks and one slightly more powerful one, we ended up with 3 functioning strands of lights! We didn’t stop there either. One night, later on in the week, Mike came up with the idea of making paper snowflakes. So we sat down and proceeded to spend a good 3 hours constructing these things. It was like our elementary school days, only we were competing to see who could make the coolest snowflake by using razor blades and other sharp tools I’m not usually allowed to play with. By the end of the night we ended up with 33 masterpieces, and the next day Sean and Mike meticulously hung each one from the ceiling of our living room. It looks pretty cool, and technically we can’t complain anymore about the lack of snow in Honduras. As for outside activities, the church has been holding nightly Convivos, which translates to “living together”, in each of the different communities of Talanga over the past 2 weeks. As usual, we’re expected to go to each of them, but they do come with the added bonus of food after each nightly mass. Granted the food is generally the same each night, arroz con pollo and rosquillas en miel (delicious rice with chicken and not so delicious biscuit things drenched in honey), but they are fun and it gives us the chance to meet people we usually wouldn’t in each of the church communities. It’s also the season of Posadas which are nightly prayers for the 9 nights leading up to Christmas. This was another instance of my host mom bringing me to an unknown location for an unknown activity, which happens quite often due to my lack of understanding of things yet willingness to say yes to anything, but they’ve been really interesting too. They start with half the group inside the house and the other half outside the front door singing a song about Mary and Joseph looking for each other. This confused me a lot the first night, but from then on they always start with the same song followed by a discussion on the Bible reading and the theme of the day.

Christmas Eve is apparently the only real celebration here, with Christmas Day reserved for rest. It sounds like the night starts with mass at 8pm, and from there you spend time with your family, eat, drink and be merry. Gifts are not as common here, but people celebrate by dressing up in a nice, new outfit. Midnight is rung in by plenty of fireworks and gunshots into the air in typical Honduran fashion. Unsafe sure, especially because fireworks are found everywhere in town these days and are most frequently purchased by school-aged children because there are no laws against it. This tradition does sound somewhat safer however than those on New Year’s. I was talking to my 14 year old host brother the other day, who happens to be very responsible and a reliable source, but he informed me that on New Years everyone makes a stuffed person-scarecrow like thing to represent the old year, and takes it out into the street, douses it in gasoline and lights it on fire… all this along with more of the aforementioned fireworks. I’ll definitely let you know how all this plays out, but for now we’re just anxiously anticipating these activities.
One somewhat shocking discovery we’ve made this Christmas season is the Honduran version of Santa Claus. I guess maybe we can generalize it more and call it the Central American version since we first encountered one in Nicaragua. Walking through a mall in Nicaragua, I spotted a Santa Claus like figure sitting in a chair, with a photographer close by... nothing out of the ordinary. When I walked by however, I was convinced it was some sort of porcelain-like artificial Santa because his face was pale white and he wasn’t moving. I turned around though to see it was actually a man, and he was looking at me, thus realizing that Santa Claus was indeed alive. I have no idea why someone decided to paint Santa’s face white, but I guess it’s just another instance of something being “Americanized” here. It’s frustrating, because not only is it completely unnecessary, but now I’ve also developed a fear of scary porcelain Santas.  

The delicate snowflake hanging process, using our living room furniture :)

Adding the finishing touches to our tree... it's only too bad the cat no longer has to be encouraged to get in the tree.

Sandy, Vanessa, Katerine, Andrea and Gabby working on making snowmen/muñecos de nieve at Domingos Divertidos last weekend.  The kids loved it, despite the fact the concept is pretty foreign to them here!

The "tough guys" from Domingos Divertidos that insisted on getting their picture taken in front of our tree :)