"It’s the holidays, and my family is already starting to look at Christmas trees, hang up stockings, and finding space in our schedules to secretly wrap presents for one another. However, in Mexico it’s a different story"
-emiliano estrada
It’s the holidays, and my family is already starting to look at Christmas trees, hang up stockings, and finding space in our schedules to secretly wrap presents for one another. However, in Mexico it’s a different story. Christmas is less of a household family oriented holiday, and is celebrated like how Americans celebrate Thanksgiving. It’s a big party with lots of food, music, laughter, and family drama. Pozole, tamales, rice, beans, flan, all of that. However, the real gift giving holiday in Mexico is Dia de los Reyes, Day of the Kings; where kids place their shoes at the door and parents put presents in them or around them depending on size. Although the emphasis on which holiday is celebrated is different between Mexican-Americans and Mexicans, my family is really big on Christmas.
Like most Mexican-Americans, my family starts off Christmas within their home. In my house, I wake up at 7:30, play video games while my family wakes up, then we open presents and eat breakfast. I enjoy this, because my sister always sleeps in until 10:00, so I get more time to be left alone, and my parents can spend more time making some really good eggs and bacon. It’s relaxing. However, when we finish that and go to my aunt’s house, it’s a different story. All the kids run into the big house showing of their toys, parents complaining to each other about the audacity their kids had to ask for such expensive gifts; we shake up the whole Walnut Creek suburb. A big table of food, snacks, tortilla chips, bowls of guacamole, too much soda, and just as much noise. Parents in one room, kids in the other. I’m at the age where I’m allowed to travel to both realms, but I prefer to stay with my younger cousins. My aunts and older cousins just ask me too many questions about school. The kids wrestle, go out on the street and play games, while I sit on the porch with my cousin Pancho and we mess with my little cousin Aiden. He is the Tasmanian Devil on crack. He’s two years old, hits hard, and made an eight year old cry. He’s a bad kid. After everyone gets tired and wants to get home we do secret santa gift exchanges. These can go really good, or really bad. Back on Thanksgiving, everyone wrote their name on a post it and three things they want, under $30. I never write anything, but they made sure to make me ask for something so I wrote snacks and pink leopard print underwear as a joke. I’m scared I might get it.
Like most Mexican-Americans, my family starts off Christmas within their home. In my house, I wake up at 7:30, play video games while my family wakes up, then we open presents and eat breakfast. I enjoy this, because my sister always sleeps in until 10:00, so I get more time to be left alone, and my parents can spend more time making some really good eggs and bacon. It’s relaxing. However, when we finish that and go to my aunt’s house, it’s a different story. All the kids run into the big house showing of their toys, parents complaining to each other about the audacity their kids had to ask for such expensive gifts; we shake up the whole Walnut Creek suburb. A big table of food, snacks, tortilla chips, bowls of guacamole, too much soda, and just as much noise. Parents in one room, kids in the other. I’m at the age where I’m allowed to travel to both realms, but I prefer to stay with my younger cousins. My aunts and older cousins just ask me too many questions about school. The kids wrestle, go out on the street and play games, while I sit on the porch with my cousin Pancho and we mess with my little cousin Aiden. He is the Tasmanian Devil on crack. He’s two years old, hits hard, and made an eight year old cry. He’s a bad kid. After everyone gets tired and wants to get home we do secret santa gift exchanges. These can go really good, or really bad. Back on Thanksgiving, everyone wrote their name on a post it and three things they want, under $30. I never write anything, but they made sure to make me ask for something so I wrote snacks and pink leopard print underwear as a joke. I’m scared I might get it.