For the last 20+ years, Ian and I have spent Christmas with a wonderful group of people in Vancouver. We have for all of these years maintained certain Christmas traditions that brought much hiliarity and fun to Christmas day. One of these traditions is making a Christmas hat. This is usually done with the bits and pieces left over after everyone has wripped into their presents. So in the spirit of it all, Ian and I decided to carry on this tradition here in Mexico. You can see the results for yourself in the photo. Although we couldn't be with our friends this year, we were there in spirit and we did send them the photo.
It was a very different Christmas for us being here with out our family and friends. On Christmas Eve, we decided to go into town and see how the Mexicans were celebrating. The streets were full of people but that's not unusual as they often are, but there were lots of family gatherings going on and parties. As we got to the town square, there were lots of people there, the stalls were open for last minute gifts and people were just out and enjoying the evening. We walked down to a restaurant that had live music going on. We were the only gringos in the place it was full of Mexican families enjoying a nice Christmas eve dinner and entertainment. The music was beautiful Mexican folks songs that the audience seemed to be very familiar with as many of them broke into song.
As we left the restaurant, we heard the church bells ringing. It was 10pm and there was a service about to begin. We were looking into the church and listening to the beautiful singing as the priest came by and invited us in. We sat at the back of the church for about a half hour of the service and it was quite nice.
Christmas day was very quiet there were no fisherman going up and down the esturary, the town was very quiet as well. We spent a nice morning reading and making our hats, and then we cooked a chicken curry to take to the pot luck over at the marina. We met some very nice people at the pot luck and will no doubt run into some of them again along the way.
All in all is was a pleasant experience and now we have New Years festivities to look forward to.