Christmas in exile
OUR first Christmas in Mexico was a relatively quiet one; there were only a handful of Filipinos, none living in our neighborhood, but kind enough to invite me and my children to celebrate Christmas Day with them. We were living in Colonia Polanco, a rather Bohemian “village,” in a lovely heritage building on Calle Virgilio where all the green grocers and specialty food shops were located. Traffic was terrible on weekends and during the holidays when all the señoras from Lomas de Chapultepec (their Forbes Park) would swoop down in their chauffeured limousines to buy the best ingredients for their Christmas parties.
A block away was the Abraham Lincoln Park, a mini-forest with a pond, an open-air theater, cafes, bookshops, and galleries. Around the park were elegant homes in the Art Deco style and the more elaborate “Lebanese baroque.” That was where Leon learned how to bike. Every Sunday, my friends and I would take our children to the park to have lunch; there were always performing artists, mimes, and singers. Once, Oscar Chavez came to enthrall us with his protest songs about Che Guevara, the horrors of military rule in Chile, and the indomitable Nicaraguans.
Around the corner from Calle Virgilio, there were Christmas trees for sale, real pine ones from Amecameca de Juárez, a municipality on the “ruta de los volcanes,” at the foot of the Sierra Nevada. Apparently, the local government had set up pine tree nurseries there to prevent the wanton cutting of pine trees in the forests around Mexico City. I chose a tree my shoulder height, as I had to drag it up three floors with the help of my babies. We decided not to buy those banal commercial Christmas decorations; we wanted something truly Mexican which we could not find on Calle Virgilio. A friend suggested the “Fondo de Cultura,” a government -owned handicraft store, across the city on Avenida Revolución. What a delightful place it turned out to be! A veritable treasure trove, it had a fantastic inventory of quality “artesanias” from every corner of the United States of Mexico.
The children found the Mexican decorations for our real Christmas tree; angels in various poses, cute farm animals and mascots, dazzling stars in many sizes, lanterns, flowers, all made of embossed tin and painted in brilliant colors. I must have purchased at least 2 dozens; we used those decorations and cherished them during the 8 years that I lived in Mexico. Perhaps it is time to bequeath them to my half-Mexican grandchildren, Tekwani and Aurora Yol who live in a forested ranchería their mother named “El Rizal.” As it was getting chilly in the evenings, I bought bulky hand-woven jackets from Chiconcuac and woolen horongos from Amatepec; we were ready to brave our first Mexican winter.
After a couple of years, we moved to the suburbs to our own house at the exhacienda de Santa Mónica, in the burgeoning municipality of Tlalnepantla de Bas. We had a bigger kitchen and I had begun working as a researcher for the Centro de Studios Económicos y Sociales del Tercer Mundo. Every year, our boss, former President Luis Echeverria, distributed double-breasted butter turkeys on the last day of work. We always looked forward to those turkeys because they were our family Christmas projects. Fatimah, Leon, and I would spend hours at the kitchen preparing the turkey for our Christmas dinner, and the days that followed. We wanted to be creative about it and decided not to be bound by any recipe I had learned in life. We stuffed the turkey with what we liked best – roasted castañas, slivers of sugared apricots, dates, walnuts, almonds and cashews, ground chicken meat in lieu of bread crumbs, etc. With a syringe, we injected the turkey flesh with brandy. We bought tins of jellied arándaro (cranberry), which was de riguer for turkeys. I would prepare an ensalada rusa, making sure to mix in the beets just before serving.
Christmas in Mexico does not begin with the first “-ber” month but with the “Posadas” which starts on 16 December and ends on Christmas Eve. This commemorates the night Mary and Joseph were in Bethlehem and could not find a place to stay. It is a lovely community activity, which we did not have in Colonia Polanco because we were living in a building. In Santa Mónica, we had many friendly neighbors, so in a group, each holding a lighted candle, we sang the “posada” song and knocked on doors of designated houses asking for shelter. The last stop was at the home of the appointed host who would give us “posada” and serve corn tamales with atole or pan dulce and chocolate. We lingered, enjoying the “sobre mesa” which usually consisted of laughing at politicians, planning on how to beautify our colonia (village), or exchanging tips about where to spend summer vacations. We were all middle-class, working parents with aspirations for our children some of whom went to the same schools.
Mexicans are so much like Filipinos, that is whyI have fond memories of those Christmases in exile.