More December: Christmas Eve!

Christmas Eve (Dec. 24)

Another exciting happening at the Finca this holiday season was the arrival of a live pig! The kids loved going to visit him and feed him. We even took a field trip during Winter School to check him out. Some gave him the name Wilbur (not to be confused with Wilmer, a boy who lives in house 5). 

 

Here Jacob and I are doing our manly duty and eating freshly slaughtered and cooked pig on Christmas Eve. Not quite Uncle George and Aunt Connie’s pork tenderloin sandwiches, but pretty darn good!

Christmas Eve or Noche Buena is the climax of the Christmas festivities here in Honduras. We were fortunate enough to have Mass in our chapel as a Finca community complete with Christmas hymns in English and the birthday song as our recessional hymn. We sang the words “Ya queremos pastel” (a popular 2^nd verse of the birthday song meaning “we want cake already”) after Padre Felipe gave the final blessing. All of this was in honor of Padre Felipe’s mother who joined us for Mass and was celebrating a birthday.

The celebrations continued with a huge feast (see pig above), dance presentations, and two theatrical performances. Below is a picture of our older kids doing a play about Nativity scene full of misfits (eerily reminiscent of the one in our chapel) including Santa Claus, a lion, and an angel with a beard. 

The younger kids did a traditional Christmas pageant complete with swaddling clothes and the Angel of the Lord and a tiger (at least we’re consistent).

We even got a visit from the big man in red!

Not everyone was having a Feliz Navidad.

Somehow I ended up carrying Elena’s princess backpack most of the night.

At midnight we went out to the soccer field, stood in a circle in the darkness to say a prayer of thanksgiving, and proceeded to do what naturally follows…shot off fireworks.

Upon arriving back at our house, we discovered that Santa Claus had already visited us…

And left us a brand new oven!

Feliz Navidad (only a month late!)

More December: Las Posadas

Posadas (Dec. 15-23)

Las Posadas (which means “The Inns”) is a typical Latin American tradition in preparation for Christmas. Las Posadas commemorates Joseph and Mary’s journey to Bethlehem and search for an inn as they prepared for the birth of Jesus. 

There are different variations on this tradition, here is our twist: Every night for 9 nights, one boy dresses as Joseph and one girl dresses as the expectant Mary. Everyone else processes from house to house behind them singing hymns (or at least attempting). At each house a song (from the perspective of Joseph and the innkeepers) is sung back and forth between the anxious crowd outside and those behind the conspicuously closed door. At the first few houses the Holy Family is refused entry due to a lack of space (whose idea was it to have everybody and their brother come back to their hometown just to participate in a census?...and that actually worked?). The procession passes on crestfallen until finally the pilgrims are allowed into the home, and you know the rest of the story from there. 

 

Well, each night there is a reflection of a theme. For us the theme centered around one of the symbols of Christmas from the star to the donkey to gifts to…of course…Santa Claus! Due to my naturally jolly demeanor and little round belly that shakes when I laugh like a bowl full of jelly, I was an obvious choice for the role of ol’ St. Nick.

As Santa…

And as St. Nicholas.

The final night of Posadas took place at our house with the Nativity story.

A Long December: Much Awaited Update

So you, Dear Reader, are not overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information which I will be reporting to you concerning my activities in the month of December, I will be updating with a shorter post once a week for the next three weeks. Stay tuned!

Immaculate Conception (Dec. 8)

What better way to celebrate the Immaculate Conception of Mary than to run across the Finca cheering and singing? Here at the Finca we have several Nicaraguan missionaries and a Nicaraguan religious sister. For Nicas IC is one of the biggest feasts of the year, so it was pretty grand for us this year too. We began with a novena (nine days of prayer), but in true Finca fashion this novena began a little too early to actually end on December 8^th for mysterious reasons. 

Anyway, on the last day of the novena, we split up into groups and went stampeding from house to house on the Finca. Each house had a small altar on the porch with pictures of the Virgin Mary. Upon our arrival we sang a Marian hymn, did a little cheer (“? Quien causa tanta alegría? ...! La Concepción de María!”). At each house we received a Little treat, so all in all it was kind of like Marian trick-or-treating.

Advent

December also meant a time for preparing ourselves for the birth of Christ at Christmas. In the missionary house we decorated in the traditional, North American way, but we also had a Jesse Tree. We decorated our Jesse Tree with symbols from the story of Salvation History as recounted by the Hebrew Scriptures as well as a personal ornament from each missionary that symbolized a family Christmas tradition. My symbol was the train—for the train that we always have around our tree at home, running our Lionel toy trains at the Germantown Train Station, and receiving them as gifts each year.

Our house was lacking in one decoration which in my mind is essential to Advent: the Nativity scene. My mom collects Nativity scenes, so when we decorate almost every surface of our house has one. Because we did not have one in the missionary house, I made this one: 

 

Our chapel was not without a Nativity scene though; in fact, it had a quite inclusive one complete with an elephant, a penguin, and Little Red Riding Hood. Who knew they were there? I trust our Franciscan sisters on this matter whose founder, St. Francis, developed the Nativity scene tradition.

I was also lucky enough during December to go into Trujillo with a few of our little girls to grab some ice cream and see the Christmas decorations around town:

 

*Note: Grandma and Grandpa Kuehl have this same plastic light-up Nativity scene in their window every year.

In Brief:

I saw huge Double Rainbow!

I’m officially a resident of Honduras (special thanks to professional bureaucrats in the Honduran migration office for making the process as sufficiently painful and slow as possible).

House 3 (little boys) spent a week trying to capture and domesticate a baby squirrel.

Winter School ended January 13!

Real school begins February 1!

In December I read The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis (again), some of David Sedaris’ Me Talk Pretty One Day, book 1 of The Hunger Games, and I just finished The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien.

Thank you to everyone who sent Christmas cards and packages! It really means a lot more to me than you can know!

To be Continued…