Guatemalan Christmas Music

Well I just started this blog thing and I feel like I can´t have just one entry on here so here´s a bit I wrote about the family I´m staying with.

As mentioned before I signed up with a Spanish school and they got me placed with a family right away, it´s an interesting situation.

The family seems to be devoutly Christian as is evidenced by a quite large Nativity scene they have set up in the aforementioned living-room-of-sorts. It´s complete with lights, figurines of all shapes and sizes, and just about every Christmas decoration imaginable, it even has one of those plug-in fountains with running water.

Every night around 6:30 or 7:00 guests start showing up and they, along with the family, all go in the ¨Christmas Room¨for Prayers. It´s always right at the same time we´re (the other students and I) are having diner so we can hear all the goings on.

It´s not just prayers but a whole ceremony with tambourines, drums, and signing. We get a good laugh at diner each night because they don´t seem to have any rhythm at all. The comparison has been to when you give grade schoolers musical instruments for the first time. I know, I know, I´m going to hell.

To add to the comedy of the situation they have some device (I´ve yet to locate the thing so I don´t know exactly what it is) that plays ding-dong versions of all the classic Christmas carols. They leave it on all evening so it´s the background music to diner each night.

The carols come from the garden area which is on the opposite side of the dining room as the the Christmas Room, so I don´t think you can hear them (the carols) from the Christmas room. However they are clearly audible from the diner table. So our diner music ¨play list¨is composed of the ongoing ding-donging of Sleigh Bells ringing in the snow intermittently overwhelmed by the un-rhythmic chanting and drumming emanating out of the Christmas Room. If only I had something to record the whole thing.

I was a bit curios as to why they were still celebrating Christmas in the middle of January, so I asked. Apparently it goes until the 2nd of February. So I´ve got another 2 weeks of Guatemalan Christmas Music to look forward to. I guess I have the lord to thank.