Gringo Christmas

Well, I think the United States is special in its Christmas traditions….and other countries have take bits and pieces of the Christmas glamour, but….at least in Costa Rica, never really got the whole Christmas thing.

I had people telling me that Christmas was December 24th (WHAT!) and being confused about the whole when to give presents thing. In Costa Rica, it is a law that all employees must receive an EXTRA paycheck in December. Therefore, the grand majority of Costa Ricans have A LOT of extra cash in December! They obviously spend in buying clothes, shoes, and Christmas presents, but they didn’t do a very good job of then HIDING all those presents, wrapping them, and putting them under the tree -- which is clearly the ONLY right thing to do with ANY presents bought after November 25th, right?

Anyways, I was determined to have a REAL Christmas this year. Luckily, my oldest sister really gets in the spirit and we decorated the whole house with lights and and trees and all sorts of Christmas things on November 15th! Hahahaha. Then I asked my mom to send Christmas stockings, which I faithfully painted with glitter glue the names of my family (and Derlis and Davis, because they practically live in our house anyways) and we hung them on the main wall. We then exchanged names for big gifts (with a price limit of $12) and decided to fill the stockings with little, inexpensive gifts. We ALL obviously purchased gifts for the kids…

We even made a Christmas chain so that Sharon (niece) could count down the days until Santa Clause. She loved it and everyday woke up asking to tear off a day of the chain...

We had a huge Christmas dinner with the whole church on Christmas Eve

and then we had a pajama party beside the tree to wait for Santa Clause.

It was so fun putting all the gifts under the tree and filling up the stockings.

I’ve never been up that late to watch the tree be filled with gifts.

And at 6:00 on the dot the kids woke up and came running to see all the presents! We let them open everything…..there were Barbie’s, Barbie dream castles, Princess dress-up kits, Barbie make-up, stickers, coloring books, clothes, cars, trains, drums, trumpets….seriously, it was so happy. The kids just didn’t know what to do with themselves!

Then we, the adults, exchanged gifts and opened our stockings…and we ate coffee cake….and played with the kids….and then we wanted to go back to sleep……but basically we just a calm day watching movies and hanging out. It really was a Merry Christmas!
Even though, I had to insist many times that gifts had to be wrapped, had to be under the tree, and that we HAD to wait until Christmas morning…..I think everyone really enjoyed gringo Christmas!

I hope you all really enjoyed your gringo Christmases as well and Happy New Year!!

P.S. Costa Ricans do have one Christmas tradition that I love! They love to have fireworks during Christmas...and we might be talking homemade fireworks.