I took one look around the tiny, dingy room I had rented and began questioning my sanity. It was December 2 and I was in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, after a tiring 24-hour bus ride one thousand miles south of the border. During an earlier October visit, I had rented the cheap second-floor room […]
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The flash of skate blades against gleaming ice. A cold-edged wind that creeps into your bones. The sharp, metallic smell of snow in the air. Winter. These are the images that most of us connect to our vision of an outdoor skating rink. But the rink I am standing beside is in Mexico City‘s Zocalo (main […]
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Did you ever go Christmas caroling, wrapped up against the cold, on a snowy night? Bring back memories of red, runny noses and your warm breath making clouds in front of your face? There usually was a cup of hot chocolate waiting for you somewhere along the way. Mexican children have their nine days of […]
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End of year holidays in small Mexican towns in the Sierra Madre mountains and everywhere else have a very special meaning. Folks come home. Milking cows and growing corn or coffee isn’t everybody’s idea of making a good living, so they try to realize their golden dream and head for the cities, but Christmas and […]
Continue ReadingOnce again, the time to talk turkey has arrived, and in Mexico this can inspire quite a bit of talk indeed. Over thirty words for the bird have been used at one time or another in various parts of the country, twenty-one of which were still in use when Dr. Lawrence B. Kiddle wrote “The Names […]
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Nochebuena, the Mexican name of the flower English-speakers call poinsettia, was discovered in Taxco and the valleys surrounding Cuernavaca. Known by the Aztecs in their native Nahuatl language as cuetlaxochitl, it is believed that they brought the plant from the tropical climate of Cuernavaca to their Aztec highlands for cultivation in special nurseries. Prized in […]
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Inside Mexico In those days a decree from Emperor Augustus was issued, ordering a census for the entire world. […] Everybody had to be registered, each one in his city. Also Joseph, who came from the lineage of David, came up from the city of Nazareth, in Galilee, to the city of David, named Bethlehem, […]
Continue ReadingChanukah, one of the celebrations of light during the time of Winter Solstice begins at sunset on December 3 this year. Each evening, families light candles to remember the triumph of the Maccabees who regained control of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem and the great miracle which happened there, when the remaining supply of consecrated […]
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All around town, people are carrying babies. It takes me a moment to realize, (mostly because they are swaddled in blankets) that they are not real babies but dolls. Then it takes me another moment and a scolding from my new mother-in-law to realize that they are not dolls either. They are Niños Jesus — […]
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Decorated evergreen trees, garlands of greens and ivy, yule logs, shiny glass balls, seasonal music, twinkling lights, special family meals, shimmering stars, brilliantly red poinsettias, silvery ribbons, mounds of presents, and Santa Claus are the vibrant heralds of the Christmas season in the United States and Canada. Few North Americans recognize that the roots of […]
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