Thursday, December 24, 2009

Things I Don't Understand About Christmas in Chile

1) The weather- Ok. I understand this intellectually. That the earth is on an axis that moves and sometimes the bottom of the planet is closer to the sun and the top is farther away. But today is December 24. I woke up this morning and put on jeans, a t-shirt and sunscreen. And the strangest thing is that they don't even try to adapt it. There are machines that blow fake snow in the department stores. If you get this message in time, please send snow and mistletoe.

2) Pascua- According to sources as varied as my high school Spanish text book and Wikipedia, Pascua means Easter. But apparently it also means Christmas. Santa Claus is Viejo Pascuero. I've asked lots of people how and why they came to call Christmas Easter, and I've never received a satisfying response. It just is. Nothing about the etymology of the word or the history of the celebration seems to justify using Pascua to refer to the birth of Christ. If someone could shed some light on this mystery I'd be much obliged.

3)Bagpipes- Maybe it's a strange coincidence but some guy around the corner has been playing "Amazing Grace" on a bagpipe the whole damn day. I don't know what holiday that is appropriate for (Veteran's Day?) but it's certainly not Christmas. Quit it, dude. You're only making things more confusing.

Anyway, I hope you all have very merry christmases or at least happy days today and tomorrow. And that you're warm and with people you love. I'm going to go make ceviche and a peach tart. One nice thing is that I don't have to eat ham.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Here, they have reggae Christmas songs ... it's just so weird to listen to island style music about Christmas. I can't deal with it.

Oh yeah, and Alice Cooper has a radio show here. The other day, he played a version of Let it snow that was done by Ozzy Osbourne, and Jessica Simpson. It was as horrible as you can imagine it to be.