On holidays: Feliz Navidad y Prospero Año

Happy Holidays!

Christmas has passed and I made it even though the internal clock tells me that I should be finishing all my finals, heading back home on a crowded and flu induced airplane, wrapping presents with my mom, working at the Italian restaurant I am lucky enough to have a job at whenever I am in town (where, by the way, I can make more in two nights there than my entire monthly salary here), cross-country skiing and spending time with family. It’s been a bittersweet holiday season. It’s warm and sunny here, but snowy and chilly at home. And I’ve been able to celebrate special traditions with my wonderful family on the beach in Manzanillo, but I miss the old Raff family traditions family in Sun Valley.

Christmas traditions are quite different here. So given that I’m in a completely new cultural context for my favorite holiday of the year, I might as well let you know how they celebrate La Navidad here. Interestingly, Dominicans are eager to adopt many American traditions, like hanging festive wreaths, using plates and cups with snowy scenery and assembling mini plastic Christmas trees. But there is no such thing as present giving, believing or not believing in Santa Claus, or drinking eggnog. And, the main festivities take place on the Christmas Eve, when the mom of the house slaves away at a beautiful dinner of an entire smoked pig, roasted chicken, rice and beans, potato salad, plantain pot pie, Wonderbread with mayonnaise, and of course, beer and rum.

The buildup was insane, people talking for weeks about the cena Navideña we were to have and excited a gathering of all the family members finally in one place to eat together at the table and give our thanks. Well, as it turns out, while my host mother was slaving away at this meal for two days straight, around 7pm, she put the dinner platters on the table and people came in and out of the house until 10pm to get their dinner, eat it standing up, and rush out to party shortly thereafter. I think I was wishing and hoping for a traditional American meal with a set table and a thankful family, but what I got was people who didn’t seem to register this day as a special day, and no thanks out of the normal were given to the chef. And the day of Christmas itself was pretty uneventful, except all the drinking and dancing there was to be done in the middle of the street from 2pm onwards.

I really enjoyed myself! This Christmas was so different from anything I’ve ever experienced and it took my mind off the fact that I wasn’t home. I think it was necessarily and a great cultural experience to spend my favorite holiday in this context. It certainly has given me more clarity into the Dominican family unit, role of friends and traditions of the place I’ve come to call home. I thought perhaps I’d be lonely-feeling, but I felt surrounded by so many people eagerly inviting me to their house for dinner. I ate at three houses on the 24^th and had to turn down invitations for four others – talk about popular!

Here are some other interesting Dominican Christmas traditions:

1) Apples and grapes and those little gooey fruit shaped candies.

This is the staple of Christmas dessert. In the month leading up to Christmas, apple and grape stands popped up on the street everywhere and are constantly being offered at every house I go to. Even though in the Peace Corps we like to call apples “diarrhea bombs,” I ingested one everyday this month and have yet to come down with a bout of diarrhea.

2) Rifas! Raffles!

I live in a culture of hopeful thinking, betting, and luck. And this is the time for raffles because Dominicans think their luck increases with the holiday season so even though they live in abject poverty, they bet their last pesos in the holiday rifas. I entered a raffle to win a live pig, a four hundred pound bull, a washing machine, a blow dryer, and a motorcycle. I’m pretty sure the money went to the person selling the raffle tickets, not the raffle itself. For example, the raffle for the pig was supposed to take place on the 14^th of December and on the 13^th of December the raffle master’s house burned down. Did we raffle the pig? I don’t know. So what happened to the money? It’s probably being used to buy roofing and cement to rebuild Mama Julia’s house. Another girl was shameless about the raffle profit and when I asked her, “So where does the money go?” she looked at me confused and said, “It’s going to help me buy a scientific calculator.” Was there even a raffle? I don’t know, but I certainly didn’t win any of the prizes.

3) Compartir!

For the past six nights, I have not eaten dinner in my own house. One night, we had a surprise Christmas party, the next night a church Christmas dinner, the next another church dinner, the next at a friends, and the next my three-course Christmas Eve feast. The word compartir literally means “to share” and in reality it looks like a bunch of people sitting in plastic chairs, talking, eating rice and beans, drinking coffee, and eating apples. It’s the best way to be Dominican and something I’ve gotten exponentially better at this in the month of December when most social activities are centered around the compartir. Most compartirs, however, are extremely awkward, with people sitting and staring at each other and not saying anything for hours, usually because the endless bachata and merengue music is too loud to talk, but another explanation is that many Dominicans don’t really ask about other people. As someone who prides myself on being talkative, curious and inquisitive, I often find it hard to just sit , staring and tapping my foot offbeat to bachata and merengue, but I definitely got better this month! As I said to my bestie Dante (a fellow Idaho volunteer), this is the best practice we’ll have for awkward dinner parties back home.

4) Slaughtering a pig, or goat, and multiple chickens.

Poor Canchito the housepig had to die. It was one of the coolest things I’ve experienced during my time here, but definitely the most upsetting noise I’ve ever heard. The slaughter ritual begins in the morning when Canchito was given only water for breakfast. (“You don’t eat for at least 8 hours if you’re having surgery” said my host dad Enriquito). At 6pm, the pig slaughterer, Isidro, brought Canchito into our driveway and sat on her while she squiggled, screamed and yelped and as he stuck a knife into her throat for a solid 45 seconds while her wriggling became less and less until she finally became limp and lifeless. Then, Isidro cleaned her off and poured boiling water on her to loosen the hair folicles and shave her hairless. Then, Isidro cut and broke her hoofs off, sliced down her belly to cut out the insides, chopped off her head, and cut her into four pieces. She was then hung from a tree to cure. We brought her in at night to season her with garlic and then smoked in the oven overnight. She was ready for my plate a mere eight hours after she was killed. Now that’s fresh meat!

4) Drinking and dancing!

Who needs a nice home cooked sit down meal when you can have the ama de la casa (housewife) cook it all up on the 23^rd and 24^th with no help from the hombres (men) and serve it to you piping hot on the 24^th for you to enjoy while standing in the middle of the street, drinking rum, blasting music and then changing into your going out clothes for dancing? And that’s just what Christmas was - eating, drinking and dancing. And I loved it. Not like any Christmas I’ve ever had before, but fun nonetheless.

And the parties continue this week and into next with the finals in our town baseball tournament this weekend, family members coming in from out of town, and a general reckless spirit that has embodied the Dominicans in the last week of the year. No one is working, everyone is celebrating, and we’re just trying to make it happily and healthily into the New Year.

On Monday, I will be heading to the beach town of Cabarete in the North to reunite with all the volunteers and celebrate the New Year together. And then on the 3^rd, I’m back here to plan and organize my groups and start the projects I have been anxiously awaiting to begin since I arrived in country four months ago. I can feel it, 2014 is going to be a big year!!!

Wishing you all the merriest of holiday seasons and sending all my love.

Best,

Bronwen