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My Christmas in Venezuela:
By James Becher
Due to my wife needing to apply for her retirement (She's from Venezuela and worked most of her life over there) I spent Christmas in Venezuela. Let me tell you Christmas there now is nothing like Christmas here and I have a sneaking suspicion it's not like it used to be there either. Oh there were the beautifully decorated trees, but those seemed to be fewer than the last time I was there 12 years ago. There was also the occasional manger scene in a condo lobby. And there Manger scenes are more extensive and localized than ours. By that I mean that outside of the manger itself, they usually build a whole local town, thus giving the idea that Christ was born to them. However, as with the Christmas trees, the mangers were also fewer this time.
One thing that hasn't changed is the traditional Christmas food. Unlike here, Cookies are NOT associated with Christmas. Instead, they have what they call "adjackas," which are a type of cornmeal tortilla filled with meat, chicken, bacon, olives and raisins. They wrap the whole thing some kind of leaves to keep them fresh. The tortilla itself is rather greasy and not to my liking at all. The other Christmas time favorite is "pan de jamon," or ham bread. It is a layered bread with pieces of ham interspersed between the layers. Olives and raises are also sometimes added. This is really quite good.
What really struck me was the Christmas music, or should I say lack of it? They do have their own distinctive Christmas music. This is in two types. They have the Guitas, which are secular songs, not really having anything to do with Christmas, but which are played only in December (similar, I suppose, to our winter songs), and then they have the Alegeras (I may have this name wrong), which are the religious Christmas songs (similar to our carols.) Once and a while you will hear a Guita played in the stores or mall walkways, but I don't believe I heard the religious Christmas songs at all in any of the malls we visited. My wife's niece's husband has them all on his laptop and he played them for me at my request. But that was another thing I found strange--both he and his wife are lawyers, so they certainaly could afford a stereo, and yet they had no stereo in their home at all--only T.V.'s and computers. He rented an audio set and DJ especially for Christmas eve. And even on Christmas eve, I heard very few of either type of Christmas music. They love to dance, and so mostly what was played was dance music (salsa, merengue, etc.) and at top volume. With the bass effects on, the music seemed to go right through you. I longed to hear a good old carol, but even if I could have played one on the computer, the dance music would have drowned it out.
Another custom which is different than ours is that they exchange and open gifts on Christmas eve, rather than Christmas morning. They called out names of recipients over the microphone to receive their gifts. |
 
Pan de jamon
adjackas
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Thank you for sharing, James.
It's always interesting to learn about the customs in other parts of the world.
Keep up the good work.
Frederick
The copyright for this content entitled "My Christmas in Venezuela:" has been specified by the contributor as:
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The copyright for this content has been relinquished by the author. The content may be used freely by anyone.
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