La Noche Buena

Many Peruvians begin their Christmas celebrations with a traditional midnight dinner of roast turkey, the ever-popular panettone, empanadas de globo, and hot chocolate. At midnight the food is served and the festivities commence.

A year ago on Christmas Eve everything in my site was completely new and unfamiliar, including my host-family. I was unconcerned about spending Christmas so far away from my family in the States until a neighbor asked me if I missed my Mom and my eyes unexpectedly welled up with tears. My host-family seemed oblivious to my very existence and Christmas passed like any other day.

Since I'm still living in the same house, I opted to avoid the depressing monotony that is my host-family altogether and, instead, I spent Christmas Eve with Susan and her host-family, the epitome of a welcoming and generous Peruvian family.

Shortly after I arrived in the afternoon they began to assemble the nativity scene, an undertaking decidedly more complicated than necessary. At each step in the process, each person had to give his opinion, which invariably differed from everyone else's opinion. For lapses of time they just left it alone, as if it were a chore so taxing that a brief was repose was vital. The construction of the base--a multilayered amalgamation of boxes and adobe--was the subject of much debate. Even the placement of the nativity paper was surprisingly difficult. (All over Perú the same paper--green coated rice sacks splattered with pink, yellow, and purple paint--is used as a backdrop for nativity scenes. The paint speckles still make no sense to me.) Since staying up past 10 pm now proves difficult, I had to take a nap and missed the completion of the nativity scene. I awoke shortly before midnight to a massive green, paint speckled display, covered with musical christmas lights and biblical figures. As a special guest, I was chosen to place the Jesus figurine in its place.

At exactly midnight, using cell phones to determine the time, dinner was served. Waking up at midnight to consume a plate full of sugar is interesting. Following that with homemade fig wine brought from Ica in a 3 L Bum-Bum Cola bottle is even stranger. I don't think many a wine sommelier would recommend the combination or the wine for that matter.

After we ate, we exchanged gifts. Some years they don't get any presents but this year they decided to select Secret Santas and I was included. Susan and I both recieved musical jewelry boxes. Susan´s was verging on heinous while mine was shaped like interlocking hearts and boldly proclaimed "I love you!" Her 15 year old brother who gave it to me claimed that he didn't pick it out. I have no doubt that both of those boxes will make it home to the U.S.

We stayed up until 3 AM watching a DVD of cumbia videos. Perhaps it is a credit to my integration that I now actually enjoy cumbia videos--poorly made music videos complete with horrible acting, scantily clad women and large groups of grown men in matching outfits enthusiastically doing choreographed dance routines. Nothing else could really explain it; it's certainly not discerning taste. Sometime during the third viewing of the DVD, which included 81 videos, we realized that Susan and I actually appear in one of them, a video taken of a Darwin Torres concert in Pacora. We realized it when we noticed that there were crickets everywhere.