Feliz Navidad

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season! Our own family celebrations were, as usual, a mix of Cuban traditions, with Puerto Rican influence from my mom's time there in her late teens and early twenties, and meshed with Danny's own Venezuelan-Cuban roots. These are then tossed in with the medley of American traditions that surrounded us in childhood. And voilá. A mess.

For those of you who didn't grow up in Miami, here's a guide to following our traditions.

Illustrated Dictionary of Hispanic Holidays

FAMILY: Anyone in your family tree, and everyone you wish was on your family tree. For as long as I can remember, our holiday gatherings have included my immediate family, my grandparents on both sides more often than not, two sets of second cousins with their immediate families, and anyone that my parents knew of that didn't have family to go to themselves. Here are Dominic and Noemie with their fourth cousins. (That means that they share a great-great-great grandparent).

LECHÓN: A gutted pig of usually 100-150 pounds, marinated for at least 24 hours in a bath of naranja agria (sour orange), lime juice, a gazillion cloves of smashed garlic, olive oil and probably some other stuff. The pig is roasted the whole day of the 24th to be ready in time for me to eat it. It is Oh-my-goodness-Oh-so-good, and the first year I celebrated Christmas with Danny's family and they didn't have it, I was utterly devastated. Serve with black beans n' rice, yucca, a garden salad, wine, and a game of dominoes.

NOCHE BUENA: The cubans' Christmas Eve. On Noche Buena, the family gathers pretty much for the sole purpose of eating lechón sometime between the Protestant candlelight services and the Catholic midnight masses. A few years ago, my cousins spent the evening watching grizzly horror flicks. So Danny and I began spending Christmas Eve with his family, who calls it simply "Navidad"(Christmas). They eat ayacas instead of lechón (I get my lechón fix the next day with left-overs). I hope that someday Amy's farmhouse dream materializes, where we all spend a week in her North Carolina homestead to take horsedrawn carriage rides in the snow, snuggling up in our handmade quilts with hot mugs of homemade cider singing carols with Brandon on the banjo and Danny on the fiddle. And there will invariably be lots of lechón.

El DÍA DE LOS REYES: Three Kings Day, the day when children across Latin America receive gifts (deposited under their beds by the three kings on camelback). The children often leave hay for the camels to eat (much the way American children leave cookies for Santa), and if they are bad, they get coal (like the American tradition as well). I don't know any Cuban-Americans who still stay entirely true to this holiday, as it falls on January 6th and I guess parents didn't want to leave their children empty-handed on Christmas morning. This year, we did Christmas morning at the Espinosa house with the abuelos, Tio Diego, and Tio Jonny and Tia Hana with their schnauzer Roxy, dressed in her Christmas best. We went to my parents house in the afternoon. The kids still are a little confused about whether the presents were brought by Bible characters, Santa, or family, but they're too busy enjoying them to worry about such technicalities.

PARRANDA: (Of Puerto Rican origin). Similar to caroling, a band of friends or cousins gather to visit other friends and/or cousins with the intention of spreading Christmas cheer by way of singing songs that I've never heard sung by people who aren't in my family. Songs that, as far as I can tell, are about drunk fish and picking flowers on a mountainside, and have nothing to do with Jesus or angels or reindeer. Unlike caroling, there are maracas involved. These unannounced visits are also known as asaltos, which literally and appropriately translates to "assaults." As Puerto Ricans have a crazy streak, they celebrate Christmas till January 8th. They can therefore show up randomly at your house at any point in that time frame, pounding on their tambourine as loudly as possible, wailing, "Si no me dan de comer...LLORO!"* I was going to post a video but it was embarrassing.

AÑO NUEVO: New Year's Eve, the holiday of superstitions. I'm not sure how non-Cubans celebrate it, actually. Cubans are supposed to spend the passage into the new year as they wish to spend the next year- all dressed up, with wads of cash in one's pockets, dancing salsa and merengue, eating grapes (one for each month of the new year, always red, jumbo and with seeds, yuck!), drinking champagne, and watching Dick Clark on TV. This year, Danny was working. When he returned from work, he had to take Noemie to get her foot X-rayed and didn't come home till 10 pm. We went to bed early that night, reading the Chronicles of Narnia, and listening to far away fireworks in our pajamas. I don't care for injuries any more than I care to watch Dick Clark count backwards but all in all, I don't know that I'll mind too much if our evening was representative of the year to come.

* Si no me dan de comer...LLORO: "If they don't feed me I will cry!" The original song actually says, "si no me dan de beber..." the spanish word for drink. Guess we got the PG version!