La Noche Buena

A number of friends and family seem curious about what happens here over Christmas. Later in the week I'll post some pictures of the festivities, but for now, I'll bore you with my ramblings.

I'll start off by saying that there are less Christmas decorations, preparations, and music here than in the states...Possibly by a factor of 3-5. Don't get me wrong, Christmas/Holiday decorations are common, but simply nowhere near as deafening as they are in the states. They also rarely played Christmas music on the radio and on the TV there weren't many Christmas or Holiday movies. Almost no one here has a live tree and decorations for trees consist almost entirely of silver or gold orbs, not the kitchen sink type ornaments that we throw on ours in the states. Gift giving is also limited in Argentina. Kids here tend to get one or two gifts. Argentines also don't do much shopping until the last few days before Christmas. There isn't nearly as much hype leading up to the actual day. No black Friday. No door buster specials. Granted, there were some gimmicks and attractive sales at some stores in the mall, but nothing like the constant barrage of propaganda in the states.

I'm guessing that the reason Argentina doesn't celebrate or get into the holidays like we in the states do is that they are a smaller consumer market place. Let's face it, we have a ton of decorations and music in the states largely because retailers want to sell us stuff and we want to buy it. Strip the holiday of this element somewhat and you are left with.....Argentina.

And so it all started on La Noche Buena or Christmas Eve. In Argentina, Christmas eve is much bigger than the actual day itself. I'll give you a play by play of my experience here on Christmas Eve....The night before Christmas Eve I had a holiday dinner at my favorite parilla. I wound up munching on kidneys, chinchulinas (grilled intestines), and tira de asado (ribs) until about midnight and didn't get to bed until about 3am. The next morning I woke up at about 7:30 with the best intentions of going for a swim. I groggily stuffed my equipment in my backpack and began the walk to my gym. About a 3rd of the way, I realized I was far too tired and exhausted and meat hung over to either make it to the pool or swim once I was there. I decided instead to do my shopping for the day which consisted of picking up baking supplies for the cookies I had planned on making for the evening. Slightly after 8am I entered my local Coto supermarket and was amazed at the full parking lot. The interior was no less busy with people hurriedly filling their shopping carts full of Pannetone and Hard Apple Cider (here called Cidra). My new found city instincts quickly cut through my meat induced coma and told me that I had better make this shopping experience a quick one so as to avoid the long lines at the registers.

I was able to move through Coto efficiently and was off to my next task of finding molasses for ginger bread cookies. Argentines don't know what ginger bread cookies are so I decided to introduce our tradition. A friend told me that I could easily find molasses in the health food stores here and while that might be the case, none were open on Christmas Eve. Slightly defeated, I returned home, dropped my groceries at the door, and went back to bed. At 12:30, I woke up to prepare to teach English at 1pm to my now friend, Esteban. Yes, I kind of worked on Christmas Eve, but since it didn't really feel like Christmas eve anyway, it was no big deal. The class went well enough and afterwards, I grabbed a quick bite to eat and then began a long hot day of baking cookies (I'm kind of embarrased to have put that into words). I planned to make four different types of cookies to take to both my friends at one gathering and my host family later at another. Over the course of the next 5 hours, I made a batch of chocolate chip cookies, raisin pudding filled cookies, peach oatmeal fruit bars, and molasses cookies. By about 8pm, sweating profusely in the 90 degree heat combined with that of my oven, I finished.

The first stop was the center of town to a friend's swanky apartment to more or less say hi, drop off my gift of christmas cookies, chug down a glass of malbec, and then run back home to get ready for Christmas eve dinner.

Upon hitting the streets, I noticed a sense of calm and almost goodwill had passed over the city. It was quiet, there weren't many cars, people were smiling as they walked carrying food to the homes of friends and family throughout the city. In the subway, I had the pleasant surprise of a free trip, maybe to celebrate the holiday. Exiting the subway, I realized that I didn't know as well as I thought I did where I was. I asked the nearest guy I saw where Riobamba street was and he kindly directed me there and then patted me paternally on the back. Weird.

The stop at my friends apartment was short and back out on the street, I hopped on bus 152 on Marcelo T. Alvear street and started back towards my apartment. For some reason, again, complete strangers were striking up pleasant conversations with me. Somehow, there actually was a type of Christmas spirit (as cheesy as that is).

A quick stop at my apartment and a 4 block walk later I was at Argelia's carrying a mountain of cookies and a few gifts for the family. Past the ante-room in a semi-open air courtyard Argelia, my former host mom, had setup a giant table filled with a garden of various salads, plates of pork, and matambre (meat stuffed with eggs, spices, and other assorted vegetables.)

Dinner started at about 11:15 with a toast of Malbec wine (brought by the various European travelers who were staying at my former host family's place). There were a total of 25 or so people at the giant table including Argelia's brothers and their families as well as Argelia's parents.

The real festivities started at about 5 minutes to midnight. At this time, Argelia's youngest child, Maria, ran to the rooftop to look for Papa Noel (Santa Claus). At about the same time, fireworks exploded all throughout the neighborhood to celebrate the approaching holiday. Uncles were then dispatched to point out where in the sky Papa Noel could be seen. The uncles, however, seemed to always be able to see Papa Noel while the kids always seemed to miss him. A few minutes after 12, the kids returned to ground level to find that Papa Noel had somehow magically entered the house and scattered presents throughout.

At this point, gifts were torn into and in 5-10 minutes it was all over and we were back at the big table with flutes of sparkling hard apple cider toasting the arrival of Christmas Day. After the toasts and the dessert, we headed up to the rooftop to get some fresh air and had a rousing discussion about the role and importance of soccer and sports in the world. At about 4 am, some decided to try to go out dancing (Christmas Eve is a very big dancing night here) and the others (myself included) decided to go home to sleep.

For details of Christmas day in Argentina, read on in tomorrow's entry:)