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Christmas. A time for mince pies, turkey, stuffing, crackers, roast potatoes, Christmas trees, presents, family, wine, more turkey, friends, carols, board games, tinsel, Wallace and Gromit Christmas special, more food, the list goes on...So in August 2007 when I booked myself tickets for 3 weeks in Ecuador over Christmas and New Year, I did wonder what Christmas on the other side of the Atlantic would entail...
“Entonces que pasa en navidad?” (So what happens at Christmas?) I constantly asked my boyfriend for the 5 days leading up to Christmas day. “Nothing much”, was the reply. “Do you have presents?”, I asked, “Not really, just lots of family” was the reply. I remained curious and somewhat in the dark.
Christmas eve...arriving back to his house at about 4 in the afternoon, I came in the gate and double took - standing in front of me was the biggest pig I had ever seen. That definitely hadn’t been there when I’d left this morning! My boyfriend’s mum, who was hand-washing some clothes next to the kitchen, turned around and with a smirk on her face pointed at the pig, laughed and said “manana” (tomorrow). If there is anything that spending time in Ecuador has taught me, it’s not to take anyone seriously, ever. There is always someone having a joke. With this in mind, I side stepped the pot bellied beast who was nuzzling a rather fat cockerel, went inside, and didn’t give it another thought. The rest of the evening involved a haze of too much tequila, too many crates of cerveza, too much bad salsa (on my part at least) all of which resulted in me vomiting into a toilet at about 4 in the morning, my boyfriend’s sister vomiting on her parents’ bed, my boyfriend’s sister-in-law falling asleep on the floor, and the most hardy still going; still sipping cerveza until 6 in the morning.
I woke with a start. What was that? A heart wrenching scream filled the air, resembling that of a small child. I shook my boyfriend awake, “What’s going on?” I screeched in panic. “El chancho” he mumbled back at me. The pig. Anyone who has heard a pig being slaughtered will understand my pain of being woken up on Christmas Day to it happening outside my window. I put the pillow over my head and tried to block out the sound. It wasn’t going to happen. My boyfriend’s brother stuck his head through the window, “Cass”, he called, “come and help!”
I stepped gingerly out of the door – trying to keep my head steady as the hangover from hell started to hit me, only to find it was about to get worse. Blinking against the sunlight, I suddenly realised that the front door to the house was obscured. El Chancho was hanging by its feet from the roof, with several family members stripping it of its skin. I felt myself retch. This wasn’t exactly how I’d imagined Christmas Day beginning. The morning went on, and more and more family arrived – and the pig was the centre of attention. Mother, brothers, uncles, aunts, sisters, nieces and nephews, everyone was lending a hand. Buckets of gut, intestines, blood and meat filled the back yard. I took a back seat and watched– I’m no vegetarian but I’m not ashamed to admit I’m a little squeamish, and fondling a pig’s anatomy was definitely not on my to do list. A BBQ was lit and crackling and hunks of meat were put on the fire. Everyone milled about, passing around the sumptuous meat that had been cooked; laughing and helping, the young ones ran around fighting over the snippets of meat handed to them, all happy to be together at Christmas.
Lunchtime arrived, and suddenly, all the family that had been milling around disappeared. I went inside, expecting everyone to be sat there, waiting for the feast. Instead I found a few family members sat around the table – “Cass, come and eat”, said my boyfriend’s mum. She handed me a bowl of soup and I sat down. “Where did everybody go?” I asked my boyfriend. “Home”, he said. I looked at him with confusion, where was the big family dinner? Everyone’s eaten he said. After lunch we went to the river, where most of the missing family reappeared. The sun blazed down as we lay around in the water, the children throwing themselves off the banks into the water, and the adults washing clothes against the rocks in the river. With the trees all around, it felt like I was sat in an alternative jungle paradise. Christmas on the equator.
So Christmas dinner, not quite turkey and all the trimmings, it was pig intestine soup to be exact. No Christmas tree, no presents, no big sit down family dinner, just a big pig. But it was so much more than that. It was about everyone coming together, doing something as a family. The end product seemed so unimportant – it was the preparation that had been the special part. My first experience of an Ecuadorian Christmas – Weird? Strange? Different? All of those. Perfect? Definitely.
In Guayaquil they burn homemade dolls for New Years that can be as high as two floors. I was there visiting family in December of 2008 and found it to be one of my best vacations ever. Tickets for this time of year aren't cheap though. Christmas was pretty cool but the attractions are the elaborate "monigetes" (mon-ee-get-tehs) which can be very large dolls or replicas of things like the Titanic, which took up a whole block, and as I mentioned are all done for New Years. There were also entire houses covered with Christmas lights. New Years morning was interesting. I drove around and found what seemed to be an abandoned city.
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