A Cumbia Christmas

In the states we may get a bit crazy about Christmas but you get accustomed to that craziness. Stores begin to decorate 2 months in advance, the Lite FM playing Christmas music 24/7, and people trying to one up their neighbors with the latest “It” lawn decoration (personally, not a fan of the latest inflatable craze). While we probably….definitely go overboard it’s the opposite situation here in Peru. Christmas is not really a big deal. I think maybe the fact that Peruvians seem to have some sort of holiday every week and in the states we seem to cut a different holiday every year contributes to this. Last week was the Living Nativity at one of the colegios. The 5^th year high schoolers (think seniors) are supposed to put on this event to raise money to have a chocolatada* and give Christmas gifts to the kids in the campo. Well the students planned it about as well as you can expect a group of seniors who don’t care about what they’re doing would plan something. The actual Living Nativity was performed by the professors and my host dad really got into his role as Jose/Joseph. Living Navity’s are so much better with real donkeys, sheep, and cows. Following the living navity was a Christmas carol competition between all the classes. In helping one of the classes I learned from these high schoolers that any Christmas carol/song can be set to a Cumbia beat. I feel this is a “you could but should you?” situation.

To make it feel a bit more like Christmas I decided to do some baking, after all no sweets during Christmas just seems wrong.  I decided on Gingerbread, a Clark family staple, and simple sugar cookies. My host mom’s sister, Lydia, is the resident baker in Contumazá so I borrowed her kitchen and made it with her. I ended up not being able to find molasses which I did not expect seeing as its sold everywhere between here and Cajamarca. Lydia came to the rescue though when I told her I couldn’t find “miel de cana” she decided we would just make our own. This is not a solution my American brain would have come up with. Didn’t turn out exactly like the gingerbread I’m used to but it ended up still being quite delicious and it was a huge hit. Lydia insisted that I come back the next morning to make it for Christmas. There’s a high school girl I know here that wants to be a chef (this is a big departure compared to the usual professor, engineer, or doctor) so I invited to make the cookies with me. It was a lot of fun and the cookies were a huge hit.

In another effort to be Christmas-y I bought the new animated “A Christmas Carol” and “National Lampoons Christmas Vacation” among a few other movies. Naturally these are bootleg and I usually try all the DVDs before I buy them but do to my laziness I checked all but “Christmas Vacation” and of course that turned out to be the only that didn’t work. 2 soles down the drain. Damn. I was planning to give “ A Christmas Carol” as a gift to my friend Lily’s kids but I screened it first and decided it was way to serious and creepy. I also taught the kids in my English class the English lyrics to “Feliz Navidad” but they ended up being way more into playing games of Hangman, which I just taught them.

I spent Christmas Eve celebrating with the host fam. The day was business as usual because families don’t get together until night. So at night we all went to the house of my host aunt. We chatted and talked about what traditions they have and what traditions my family has. Around 10:30/11 we began to eat; chicken, wontons, empanadas, other little cookies type things, cheese, and hot chocolate.  Its tradition to keep eating until midnight (when Jesus was born) and then everyone celebrates and the hugs begin. For other families this whole things is supplemented with drinking and dancing. This Christmas Eve was also a bit sober for my host family as the grandmother had passed away one year prior. After midnight we attempted to watch a movie about western settlers in the US starring Katherine Heigle (I suspect it was from before her Grey’s Anatomy days) but couldn’t get it to work and we watched home videos instead which was actually a lot of fun and probably much better than the performance Katherine Heigel would have given.

Christmas day was also a pretty average day. I think a lot of people were nursing hangovers. We did have a big lunch with my host mom’s family though and then went to the cemetery. My host family invited a guy from their church who I couldn’t for the life of me understand and unfortunately he was incredibly interested in talking to me. My host mom also cooked up some delicious punelas (I or something like that). They’re basically like deep fired doughnut-ty things that are covered in a type of syrup. Delicious.

Now I’m headed to the beaches of Trujillo to ring in the New Year with other volunteers. Seeing as it is rainy season now once the clock hits 12 or 1 it rains all afternoon I’m excited to head somewhere warm and dry. Below is a link to a video the volunteer we replaced in Contumaza did about her service, kind of fun!

Merry Christmas! Miss you all so much!

*Chocolatadas are a Peruvian Christmas season tradition. Basically, a Christmas party that consists of hot chocolate and paneton (fruitcake)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGygIbsh8fU