Mira como beben los peces en el rio...

I've experienced my first (hopefully not my last!) Honduran Christmas...and I must say, it was pretty fantastic!

The title of this blog post comes from a really popular Christmas song that they've been singing at church and in the posadas this past week.  It's kind of bizarre and I don't really understand what fish drinking in the river have to do with Christmas, but Hondurans LOVE this song (at least the Catholic ones, anyway).

Here's the words to the chorus:
"Pero mira cómo beben
los peces en el río.
Pero mira cómo beben
por ver a Dios nacido.
Beben y beben
y vuelven a beber.
Los peces en el río
por ver a Dios nacer."

Translation:
"But look how the fish in the river drink,
But look how they drink to see God born,
They drink and drink,
And they return to drinking.
The fish in the river
To see God born."

Weird, right?  And the verses are all about the Virgin Mary doing things like bathing, combing her hair, and washing diapers.  After a little searching on google, I found some info on the significance of the song. It "draws a contrast between between the fishes in the river, who are excited about the birth of the baby Jesus, and the Virgin Mary, who goes about doing the chores of daily life."

...and here's an awesome 80's music video of the song, for your viewing pleasure. 

So, back to Honduran Christmas.
As I mentioned before, the week leading up to Christmas, the people from the Catholic church participated in "posadas" every night. I went along to the first one, and also participated in the one that took place in my host grandmother's house, which is right next door to where I live.  For the posadas, the people gather and walk to someone's house in the neighborhood.  Because Sulaco is a pretty big town, the posadas are organized by barrio and each neighborhood has their own little group.  They light candles and sing on their way to someone's home.  When they get to the door, they knock 3 times and then sing back and forth between the people outside the door and the people inside the house.  This is an imitation of what Mary and Joseph did when they were looking for room at the inn.  The people outside sing a verse of the song, asking for a place to say, and the people inside sing back, giving excuses for why they won't let them in.  Eventually, they are let into the house, where they pray, read from the Bible, discuss the readings, and then have a snack before heading back home.  It is a neat tradition, and definitely gets people into the Christmas spirit.

2 of the girls from our barrio carrying the glass figures of Mary and Joseph (Maria y Jose) during the posadas.  It was reported that the one on the right dropped and broke Jose a few nights later...oops!

You may be wondering why I'm writing my Christmas blog post at noon on Christmas day.  It's because in Honduras Christmas Eve is Christmas.  The 24th is the big day.

The festivities began when I went to church at 4 with my host family.  It was just like a regular service for the most part.  The priest's sermon was a about how Christmas is a time to spend with family and that you shouldn't drink alcohol.  That one caught me a little off-guard, but the priests often talk about corruption, violence, or other issues affecting the town or country during their sermons.  It felt a little bit like a lecture from a teacher or parent telling us to not party too hard on Christmas.

Then, we headed home and had some dinner.  A few days ago, they killed grandma's pig.  Although I didn't enjoy waking up to at 5 a.m. to the sound of the pig screaming, I must admit, it was delicious.  We had pork, nacatamales (tamales with pork in them) and tortillas.  Around 7:30 or so, all of the posadas from the different barrios were gathering at the church.  I walked over with my host mom.  The group from our neighborhood had already left, so we joined in with another group and headed to the church.  In the church, they did some readings, sang some songs, and shared some food (catrachas and bunuelos...yum!).  Then, back to the house yet again.  My host family's tradition for Christmas is to gather in the house of a great aunt.  However, one of my host sisters informed me that it is usually extremely boring.  So, the whole family decided that they wanted to kill some time and not head over there until 11:00.  We took some pictures, went cruising around the neighborhood with my host dad in his truck, and had a little living room dance party.  It's really great to have my other host sisters here from Teguz.  It makes the house a little noisier, but they are really fun. 

Belen, Amada, Me, Bessy, Grecia

 At 11 we headed over to the family gathering.  The girls still weren't too thrilled to be there, so we hung out in front of the house for the most part, setting off fireworks and playing with sparklers.  In the house there was a "nacimiento" (nativity) set up.  It was kind of a mish-mosh of lots of little figurines, many of which had nothing to do with Christmas or the nativity.

What?  You never heard about the Christmas triceratops?  I think the little drummer boy rode on him to Bethlehem :-)

sparklers!

 Christmas in Honduras is kind of like a combination of the 4th of July and New Year's Eve.  There are people with fireworks and firecrackers everywhere, and at midnight everyone sets off more firecrackers and hugs their family and wishes them a Merry Christmas.  When midnight rolled around, we headed back into the house and did an impromptu conga line dance.  Then, the Catholics got down to business and set up chairs in front of the nativity.  Everyone sat down, they began with a few songs, and then they recited the rosary.  (Not sure on the correct terminology because I'm very much not Catholic).  All I know is that it took like 20 minutes at least, and was mostly everyone murmuring incoherently in Spanish.  I sat and struggled to stay awake.  Amada, one of my host sisters, lost the struggle and ended up asleep in her chair.  At the end of the whole process, we hugged and headed back home.  At this point it was 1:30 a.m. and we were all hungry again.  So, we had some chicken and pork before crashing for the night.

All in all, I had a truly amazing Christmas.  I've kind of been bummed out the past few days because we found out we're going to have to go home.  Through the process of telling the family, my counterparts, and some friends that I have to go home, I've realized how well integrated I am into the community here.  People are really sad and disappointed that I have to leave.  It is sad that it takes bad news like this to realize how much you value the people around you and how much they care about you.  I recently got a phone call from my host family from training, to wish me a Feliz Navidad and check up on me, because they had seen the news that they were pulling us out of the country.  Throughout the night yesterday I got texts and phone calls from Honduran friends wishing me a Merry Christmas.  If you had asked me a month or so ago, I would have told you that I expected to be sad on Christmas because I will be away from my family.  But, the only sadness this Christmas was the fact that I will have say goodbye to all of these amazing people in a few short weeks.  It's going to be really hard to leave, but I have 2 1/2 weeks left here in Sulaco and I'm going to enjoy every minute of it!  Hopefully this won't be my last Honduran Christmas!