Mexico Reveals a Different Way to Celebrate Christmas
 Eileen Pierce - PVNN
| | Delivering a gift to a family that lives at the Puerto Vallarta dump is a local Christmas tradition that can make a significant difference in a child's life - and change the way you think about yours. Click HERE to learn how you can help. |
It occurs to me that before moving to Mexico, the question I dreaded more than any other was, "What are you doing for the holidays?" It would rise to the surface of every conversation held from Thanksgiving straight through to the heart of December.
In recent years, more specifically the decade or so since we turned 50, the end of November is still too early for us to have made plans for New Year’s, though Christmas is usually set in stone. That day continues to be a family affair at my brother’s house where his wife, my dear friend Patti, never shucks her monumental holiday responsibilities.
Still, our New Year’s plans have become a great big menopausal zero. Mostly we decide at the last minute to buy something special for dinner (lobster?) and have a couple (literally, no more than one or two) “old” friends over to share it.
This is a striking departure from our younger years when there was never any doubt about what we were doing for the holidays, especially New Year’s Eve. We began planning early, knowing we wanted a suitably wild and crazy time, a rich blend of food, cocktails, champagne toasts, more cocktails, resolutions, revelations, and dancing on tables. In short, celebrations so memorable that the bulk of them went entirely forgotten by the next morning.
In the last decade or so, our holiday memories are more likely to fade out than black out. They grow dustier and dustier as the new year grows older. “What did we do last New Year’s?” we ask one another. “Where did we go?”
But as we approach our second Christmas in Mexico, we can vividly recall the first. Unlike our New England holidays, it was blisteringly hot and sunny. We rose early, drank a quick cup of coffee and drove to the parking lot in front of Sam’s Club, pulling alongside a score of other SUVs all with their tail gates lowered.
We barely knew anyone but conversations were easy; we shared a common destination - the Puerto Vallarta Dump, a Christmas tradition like none other we’d ever celebrated.
Everyone was assigned a task. Some of us hauled trolleys of beans, rice, bottled water, and soap out of Sam’s to the waiting SUVs. Others packed them with soccer balls, games, coloring books and clothes we’d outgrown or outlived.
Then, as cram packed as any of Santa’s sleighs, we drove in a line, headlights glaring, through dusty streets to Vallarta’s garbage dump where thousands of people live off what the rest of us no longer want.
The women and children were waiting in a scraggly line under an unforgiving sun. A few men were still picking through the Dump, stuffing plastic bags with anything of any value they could find in the mountain of trash they mine daily. The buzzards circled overhead.
Some of the women volunteers were dipping their fingers into small bottles of cologne and dabbing scent under their noses. The stench, the heat, the weight of the dump, the smiling faces of the women and children happily waiting for their Christmas morning bounty, was surreal, one of those Mexican anomalies we have come to expect around most every corner.
I think of Christmas in the States, and am glad I am here in Mexico. I do not miss the six week drill, the collage of errands that stretch into the future like mole hills as December 25th gets closer and closer.
Of them all – the shopping, the wrapping, the planning, the office parties, the turkey dinners, the endless round of festivities - I view the choosing of the annual Tree as the most damning of all holiday chores.
Long gone are any romantic dreams of trudging through the woods and cutting down our own tree. With our children married and girding their loins for their own busy holiday season, my husband and I would go to the nursery on the Saturday before Christmas, clomp through the gray, rainy morning aisles of bundled trees, argue over which one to buy (my choice always smaller and less costly), stuff it into the back of the car, and spend the next few hours getting it up. This usually involved a saw, rope, an aging stand, a listing tree, an unfortunately low bough, a hissy fight.
The fun of Christmas came with the whiff of pine, as we hung the ornaments, and began settling one long silver strand of tinsel after another onto its branches while Frank Sinatra sang “I’ll be Home for Christmas” in the background, and we decided, after we’d finished congratulating ourselves on what a beautiful job we’d done, to order pizza for dinner.
We always enjoyed that first night most of all. We’d sit in the glow of the Christmas tree lights, moving the odd ornament now and again, drinking eggnog and for those few hours at least, sitting together with our lovely tree, we felt the spirit of a holiday that had for the most part lost its sparkle, its sense of
warmth, of humanity shared.
No, I do not miss Christmas in the States. I would rather shop and wrap on line, receive email Christmas cards, and spend my days asking my husband, “Tell me again, which day is Christmas this year?”
Not that it matters all that much, as we plan to spend the morning at the dump, the afternoon at the beach, and the evening with friends, all of which feels like the three best ways to celebrate the extraordinary gift of living in Mexico.
Given our less than sterling dealings with New Year’s Eve in recent years, and with no one around annoyingly interested in our plans, we were surprised when our friend Maggie called on December 23rd to invite us to a New Year’s dinner. “It’s a senior dinner,” she explained, “Starts at six, ends at 10 or so.”
I sighed with relief, and accepted at once. No balls, no big hugs and kisses, no endless midnight toasts.
“And don’t forget,” Maggie continued, “when it’s 10 pm in San Pancho, it’s already midnight in Times Square! So we’ll still be able to count down with the ball!”
And there it is, the magic of Mexico. More of a chance than a country, our new home is a place where we are finding something different in ourselves and something new in what remains of the ancient Mayan nation, the Conquistadors who conquered it, and the dusty revolutionaries who haunt every Mexican’s dreams.
Call me silly and sentimental, but it strikes me as miraculous, that on this Saturday before Christmas, with no tree glowing in the corner, no eggnog in the fridge, no family gathering to plan for, my husband and I have found another way to celebrate a holiday that had become as routine as brushing our teeth and walking the dog.
Here we are, on a hill, in a small town on the west coast of Mexico, having left behind far more than we took, discovering much more than we have hoped for.
 Eileen Pierce is a former staff writer and columnist for the Berkshire Eagle in Pittsfield, MA and in the last few years was the PR/Marketing Director for the Berkshire Theatre Festival in Stockbridge, MA. The co-author of the 2005 Fodor's Guide to the Berkshires and Pioneer Valley, Eileen continues to freelance for various publications, including the Boston Globe. She and her partners run the Inn of the Gata Gorda in San Pancho, Nayarit where they live year round. For more information or to make reservations at the Inn de la Gata Gorda in San Pancho, Nayarit, Mexico call (311) 258-4190. From the US call (413) 553-3628 or send an email to finefix@gatagorda.com. |
Vallarta Weddings
Vallarta Living | December 2006 
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