Es La Temporada

Somehow the translation of “Tis the Season” just doesn’t have the same ring to it in Spanish. No wonder it’s never caught on big here. That catchphrase notwithstanding, there’s actually plenty of common ground in the ways North Americans and Guatemalans celebrate the holiday season. But naturally, I spent this Christmas and New Year’s learning more about the differences: missing traditions from home, learning new Guatemalan traditions, and sharing those things that matter to me most from home with my “family” and friends here. Christmas is supposed to be more about the giving than the getting…but in this year’s cultural exchange of time-honored, close-held traditions, I think both sides felt their lives enriched. And maybe I ended up getting more after all.
My motivation to go to great lengths re-enacting many of those Roske Family traditions here in the Guatemalan context of course stemmed from my feeling their absence. With Thanksgiving long passed, I suffered from severe and unintentional Scrooge-ism: I was not at all in the “Christmas spirit”! Maybe that comes with age, that every year that spirit is ever more sluggish to arrive, but all of my normal triggers were missing this year. I missed the tree, I missed the cookies, I missed the SNOW! I missed the carols, I missed the movies that for whatever reason have been an integral part of every Christmas since childhood (you know the ones – The Grinch, Rudolph, Santa Bear, Sesame Street Christmas and the Muppets Christmas, etc.) So I hummed the carols to myself, plucked them out on my out-of-tune guitar, strung up Christmas lights in my room, poured my heart into making Christmas cards, and made cookies. Lord, did I make cookies! I suspect many Roske family friends reading this have been past recipients of these cookies, these ginger-molasses delicacies from an age-old recipe handed down from the Landwehr/Lodermeier side of the family, and well – you can judge for yourself whether you consider them anything that amazing. But I discovered this year that I am positively a seasonal addict. It is NOT Christmas, I tell you, till there are molasses cookies!
So I went over to another volunteer’s house in a nearby town and three of us (but mostly me) spent an entire afternoon/evening baking cookies in her toaster oven. (Which did not include the long and patience-trying process of frosting them all later, which I chose to do the night the power was destined to go out. Frosting cookies by candlelight isn’t actually that tricky when there are only 2 colors to work with since I only found one food dye! ha.) But there was something about those cookies and the whole love-filled process of their making that I absolutely needed to feel, that took me back all but physically to our kitchen in Minnesota at Christmastime. Rolling out the dough time after time that afternoon with the few Christmas carols we had on our MP3-players filling the air, I was almost home in Collegeville. The cookie-cutters I carefully (and painfully – bandaids!) made by cutting a big tin can into strips and bending them into shapes, were of course in loving memory of the favorite shapes we use every year at home. It all reminded me of watching my father in all his baking-frenzy glory whip out tray after tray, while my mother would inevitably be across the way decorating the gallant 14-foot tree in the living room with over two decades’ worth of commemorative ornaments, every single one with a story behind it and the vast majority the grade school glue-gun-special variety. I missed it all so much, for this is how we commemorate Christmas in Collegeville, how we measure the passage of a year – and the passage of the years. I tried to explain it; and I think Emiliana and Arnulfo understood. Even though they don’t put up a tree in the house at Christmas, they graciously accepted the woodcarved ornaments made by my grandfather that he and I strategically selected last August for me to bring for all the members of my host family. (I was a little worried at first, Grampa, considering they don’t do the tree thing or really any decorations; but the next morning I saw those ornaments hung up on all the doors in the house. :) And they of course LOVED that heaping pile of cookies I presented them. Admittedly, apart from those ornaments I didn’t stress to make commemorative ornaments or anything for all my other friends here… but I DID bring them cookies! No, the fate of those 150+ cookies we made that day was NOT to end up in my stomach. Rather I fulfilled the Roske family custom of decorating and delivering them like Santa Claus to all my friends and neighbors, always with explanation to this or that Doña of why my family does this every year, and how in a way my family back home in Minnesota was, like me, offering this gift in an act of friendship and gratitude. And in the end, the cookies weren’t really that important: explaining the tradition, and the fact that I had extended it to the people closest to me here, was what really mattered.
Now, one Guatemalan tradition for which I definitely needed some explanation was the Posadas. The word itself means inn or place to stay, but this reenactment of Mary and Joseph’s search for room in the inn was not clear to me at first. Why would we all leave the warmth of our houses at 7 pm every frigid night the entire week (9 days) before Christmas to walk from one designated house to another carrying candles in cellophane boxes mounted on poles? But once I saw how pretty those twinkling lights in their technicolored boxes looked bobbing on up the mountainsides in the dark, like a string of beads as the congregation threaded those well-worn footpaths toward the next house; once I began to learn the lyrics to their carols and share in the smiles on their faces when a familiar one was chosen; once I understood the miniature theatrical production that was done every time we arrived at that night’s assigned house reenacting the plea for hospice and the journey of the holy family, as a symbol of good will and Christmas spirit passing from one human heart to the next… I decided I’m rather fond of the Posadas and will be excited for them again next year.
In Latin American culture Christmas Eve, called Nochebuena (The Good Night), is really the big deal. All this buildup of cookies, ornaments, and posadas happened in my community; Nochebuena and Navidad itself I spent with Luis and his extended family in the capital, Guatemala City. It was so good to be around a family, at this family-focused time of year, especially for someone whose family up until this year has always managed to celebrate Christmas all together at home. But I had made up my mind long ago that I have had many and will likely have many more of those Christmases in Collegeville, and I’ve probably only got two years to experience Christmas in Guatemala. However, this was not the rural-host-community Christmas I think every Peace Corps Volunteer envisions for themselves. The urban Guatemala Christmas is rather different from the rural highlands version, or so I gathered. In the capital we had turkey with gravy and potatoes for Christmas Eve dinner, instead of the typical tamales or paches (seasoned ground corn- or rice-paste with chicken, bell pepper, and red sauce folded and steam-cooked in a banana leaf). At midnight, everybody gives hugs; but in the capital some of the guys either give hugs early or give ’em late because at precisely midnight there were fireworks set off from most every block in the city – we’re talking thousands (maybe hundreds of thousands?) of people over many square miles of city setting off a million fireworks. And with Luis’ house slightly up on the mountainsides around the city valley, we had a great view of all the starbursts looking so tiny so many miles away! I give Guatemalans credit now for knowing how to put on a pretty decent fireworks show (even if extremely dangerous and a monumental burn-up of everybody’s holiday cash!) And in Luis’ house they had a tree – a real, live, lights-n-ornaments, bona fide pine Christmas tree, and for some reason it helped me feel that finally there was some way in which I WAS home. Sadly, the only real contact I could have with folks back home this Christmas Eve was a choppy, slow connection when my parents skyped my Guatemalan cell phone. (Mom said it really helped to hear my voice and for everyone to be able to talk to me, all of them there around the tree opening the presents I had sent home. That it felt more like I was among them. Mostly I just got sad for NOT being there and frustrated that we couldn’t understand each other half the time.) So, once everyone else in Luis’ house had finally gone to bed, in the wee hours after the present opening, the Midnight hugs, fireworks, and ensuing cleanup, Luis and I just sat on the sofa together in the quiet dark lit only by the glow of the tree looking at it mostly in silence, just like I love to do Christmas Eves at home. I told him about our Christmas tree, our ornaments, our games of I-Spy and Find the Pickle. And recounting those stories and basking in the glow, I fell asleep.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Less than one week later I would find myself saying goodbye to Luis as he dropped me off at the Xela bus terminal, after we found the next chicken-bus to the border and he had made sure this bus with his girlfriend on it would INDEED be going all the way to the border, and at a timely hour. Once the bus got going, I noticed the trees change from pines to oaks to palms as I myself shed layers and began to sweat from the heat and humidity. I was headed to Mexico, to spend New Year’s and the week after at my uncle Den’s house. My parents were coming New Year’s Day too, meaning Den, Liz, my parents and I had a week of almost uninterrupted beach-town relaxation. Very different scene from the cold highlands of Guatemala.
It’s a long bus ride from Xela to Puerto Escondido, Mexico. Therefore, twenty-three hours after bidding Luis farewell (thanks in part to border crossings and long bus station waits), when Liz picked me up New Year’s Eve morning in the terminal, I had my doubts about my ability this year to really celebrate the holiday – you’re in Mexico! No parents! But keeping in mind that bus ride, let’s just say Molly’s “New Year’s in Mexico” story contained a lot more yawning and a lot less crazy partying that its title would suggest. Or maybe it’s because I’m Minnesotan and don’t know how to party in Mexico. All is know is, when my parents arrived the next day and the Mexico beach time really began, we all three looked like fish out of water!
But it was pretty special to have made it possible to be with real family for the holidays this year, at least a part. We made so many good memories – seven days of just me and my folks and Den and Liz (how often does THAT happen? or will ever happen again?)…and the beach, and sunsets with margaritas on the terrace of their house, and boogie boarding and waterfront shopping and good food and sunshine… Again, that doesn’t sound very Peace-Corps-ish to me either! I guess I can say I’m no stereotypical PCV. And while part of me wonders what it would have been like to spend Christmas and New Year’s in Toto, it’s nice knowing that even though these are family holidays when I suspected no one in Toto would miss me as I belong to no one’s family, I was indeed missed! I received and had to regretfully turn down so many last-minute warm-hearted invites to come join so-and-so for Nochebuena, c’mon the whole family will be there, you’ll love it! or New Year’s, come down to our house, you can stay over, we’ll have plenty of room and plenty of food, the fam will be so happy to see you! I hope to take them up on the rain check for next year, and in the meantime continue building those relationships in this new year we’ve been given. So happy belated holidays, everyone! Any resolutions, you might ask? Do a better job maintaining the blog. Wish me luck :)