Christmas Time in Chile

My uncle, who actually can do

a pretty good Santa.

Pretty awesome spread, including

these amazing shrimp cocktails. Here they

don't use cocktail sauce, they use americano,

AKA Thousand Island Dressing

Peruvian pisco sour, complete with sugar-

rimmed glass.

The tannenbaum replete with gifts.

Quick side note. Since everyone was home

on Christmas, wandering musical groups walked down my

street. You had to throw them money. I dropped a few coins from

my 8th floor balcony and nearly killed them.

HO HO HO! FELIZ NAVIDAD.

I hope that all of you gentiles out there had a glorious Christmas. And to all my fellow Jews, I hope that you equally enjoyed your Chinese food (I'm not going to lie, I did miss going to Yen Ching this year) and seeing the newest movies.

I would say that the strangest part about Christmas here in Chile is the absolute lack of snow, or any cold weather for that matter. For the week leading up to Christmas (AKA Hannukah for me and some others), it was not too hot here, only about 75-80 degrees everyday. And then came Christmas Eve and it was 90 degrees. Just awful. Although I love missing out on what has so far been an abysmal winter, something just did not feel right about being hot while all the Christmas trees had fake snow on them. It must be confusing for children to see all this winter imagery in all things holiday related, but to never see snow here in Santiago.

For Christmas this year, I really had two Christmas dinners. Last Monday I was invited over to my mother's best friend's home to have dinner with their family. We're very close so it was not a surprise to be invited. However, they are a very Catholic and conservative family, and I am anything but. It was a very delicious dinner (they served this type of avocado paté and then bacon-wrapped tenderloin) and then we had "secret Santa," where everyone buys one gift for an assigned person. With 7 children, plus either a spouse or significant other for everyone, it would get out of hand buying gifts for all. Afterwards, though, it became uncomfortable as we did this play the youngest daughter put together. In the activity, everyone randomly picked a stick with a Christmas character on it (Mary, Joseph, three kings, goat, star, etc.) and each person had to talk about why that character or virtue was important to them. Of course, as the only Jew there, I ended up picking the baby Jesus and having to explain why he was important to me.

On Christmas Eve, I went to my aunt's and uncle's home to spend Christmas with them. Though we are related, they're actually Catholic, though not religious at all. I got there and was blown away by all the gifts that were laying beneath the elaborate tree. I should note here that not a single person in Santiago has a real evergreen due to so many houses burning down. 

Anyway, we all gather downstairs around 9pm. We had some amazing canapes that my cousin Alejandra made along with some Peruvian pisco sour. I mentioned in the past that Chilean pisco is far superior to Peruvian pisco, however the way in which Peruvian's prepare pisco sour is much better than the Chilean way. After some chatting and what not, we sat down to dinner around 10pm. You know it's a big deal dinner here when you're served turkey due to how rare and difficult it is to get turkey, and that's what we ate. After dinner, we all hung out for a while. As opposed to the US, presents are opened at the stroke of midnight rather than in the morning, which seemed odd to me considering the whole Santa Claus coming in over night down the chimney routine. In any case, after all the presents were opening, some went to sleep, but I stayed up with Hans, my uncle, and my cousin's fiance to have a few scotch's. We stayed up until 4am drinking and chatting, mostly comparing American Christmas and New Year's to the Chilean versions. 

All in all, though I could not be with my family and friends back home, it really was just as fun and special spending the holidays here. I had an amazing time, experienced things in a different way, and felt very much at home and a part of it all.

Hopefully my next post will be later this week with a summary of New Year's Eve events. I wish you all a happy new year full of health and happiness for you and all your loved ones!