Monday, December 27, 2010

Dame Navidad...Christmas in South America

I celebrated a South American Christmas and was it a new experience. I mostly spent the majority of my time traveling as I had two weeks off from work. It was nice, but I didn't get as much sleep as I would have liked. Anyways, on to the meat of this blog post.

Christmas in Ecuador is a lot like our Halloween. But instead of children coming to your door trik-or-treating, entire poor families come looking for Christmas charity. They go door to door ringing your doorbell and when you answer they simply state, 'Dame Navidad' which translates to 'Give me Christmas'. Sometimes they will add, 'por favor' (please) to their asking. Normally it is traditional to have prepared fundas de comida/caramellos, bags of food/candy, for the families and children. In church, at the Christmas eve service, we collected clothing and food, and gave them to the poor that regularly attend the service every year looking for help and food. The poorer people from outside the city wil come down from the hills and mountains and spend a few days in the city looking for charitable donations. They will also come to line the highways that lead out of the cities looking for charities. Some families would drive out of the city Christmas day and leave things on the highway for the poorer people to collect. AS I was traveling out of the city Christmas day, I saw hundreds, if not thousands of people lining the highways, and generous passerbys stopping to unload their cars for these people. If/when a car stopped, they would be immediately rushed by the people looking to receive something from the generous givers. Others did not stop and simply through food or items from their car to the people lining the highways. It was quite a site to see.

At the Christmas eve service, we celebrated Eucharist and gave a first communion to a young girl. Although we do not do this in the Episcopal Church in the United States, here Catholic influence still plays a large part on the culture and the way many will begin receiving communion and taking communion on a regular basis. For example, some in the Episcopal Church will confess before taking communion, and others will not be satisfied with a morning prayer type service...all must have the Holy food with EVERY service. The parents will also have their children attend first communion classes before receiving their first communion. For most of the year now, we've had a class of first communion participants attending church every Sunday waiting for when they can receive. The service was beautiful and afterwards, we distributed the food and clothing we had been collecting to the poor who had attended hoping for some charitable help. 'Dame Navidad' was all they could say, and after receiving, could only mangage a faint 'Gracias' as you saw tears come to their eyes.

Christmas eve is the bigger day than actually Christmas day. Gifts are exchanged and opened on Christmas eve and the big dinner also takes place. I spent Christmas eve dinner with Padre Eduardo, my boss and director of the school, and his family for Christmas. The dinner was absoulutely incredible. Marjorie, Eduardo's wife, is quite the cook. I've been spoiled with every new family I have a meal with. They're such great cooks here and Ecuadorian food is so rico (rich)!!

I stayed the night Christmas eve at Padre Eduardo's and on Christmas day we traveled to his family's house in Ibarra, where he and his twelve siblings are from, and had a huge family reunion. It was insane. We ate so much food and played so many games from futbol (soccer), volleyball, board and card games. We also spent one day at the hot springs in Ibarra and just relaxed. It was nice.

Also during the break, I visited Colombia for a couple of days to visit with some family of theirs who are missionaries working in Pesto, Colombia. It was a nice smaller city. I was concerned about border patrol as recently relations between Colombia and Ecuador have not been great and Colombia is always going back and forth from closing it's borders to prevent immigrants hoping to escape the bad in Colombia and come to Ecuador. We didn't have any problems and we spent two days visiting the family of my host family. I also met up with the Bishop, his wife, and family to visit with him as Colombia is his home country. He took the week and a half of break visiting back home with his family so I briefly met his family in Colombia as well, before returning to Quito to celebrate the New Year. The traditions and customs of the new year will be saved for my next post. Until then, take care and here's wishing you all had a wonderful Christmas and a Blessed and Prosperous New Year! Blessings!

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