This Christmas marked my third in a row away from home. Now, I'm not a big Christmas guy. I'm not big on all the Christmas celebrations, family time, or music. It's mostly the food that I get excited about and, now that I'm here in Colombia, the idea of being cold. So I can't say that I'm not jealous when I hear stories friends tell of going back to the states for the holidays.
Christmas time here starts even earlier and in fuller force than in the U.S. They start rolling out the decorations around Halloween, and it gets exponentially stronger from there on in. I'm not a fan of U.S. Christmas music, but I would take it any day over what they play here. If it's not the four or five songs they have on repeat, in which the word "navidad" accounts for roughly 75% of the song, it is a song sung by a chorus of off-key children. It's only made better if I'm awoken at six in the morning by my family blasting the songs from their giant speakers. I find that I'm much more prone to grinchiness here than ever before.
On Christmas Eve, I played the role of a good host son and went with my family as they visited other family around town. Here, Christmas Eve is a bigger event than Christmas Day. It usually involves staying up all night drinking with your family, which is something I can get behind. At the relatives' house, we hung out for a while and listened to loud Christmas music. Then at midnight, we gathered inside for some sort of Christmas prayer sesh. Afterward, we went around in a circle and each person spoke for a bit, something along the lines of what they were thankful of. Before my turn, my host father went. He started talking about how grateful he was for his wife and about his struggles after getting heart surgery and how he appreciates his second chance at life. It was really emotional and he got choked up saying it. Then it was my turn. I had one hell of an act to follow. I threw out something about how grateful I was to have such a nice host family, which is true. But luckily no one really expected much out of me, so I got off easily. After a second dinner and the most dairy-dense desert I've ever eaten, we went back home at around 2.
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