A Tico Christmas

A Tico Christmas is the same and yet different than Christmas in the US. One big difference is the food. Most people here have rice and chicken and tamales for their Christmas feast. It is a family affair the first week or two of December to make tons of tamales and freeze them for the whole family. They will gather together for this event and each take their share of the bounty home to last the month of December.

Another Tico tradition is celebrating on Christmas Eve with family instead of Christmas day. Family gathers around 8 or 9pm and they eat all evening and shoot off fireworks all night until about 3am. They actually use the large professional fireworks that you would see in the states for Fourth of July city celebrations. All this time we thought when we heard these loud booms they were some sort of canon, only to find out these are very large fireworks! Apparently these fireworks are a nightly occurrence until after the 1st of January.

Although this year was our first Christmas away from family and friends back in Alabama, God was gracious to give us family here. My mother came down for 9 days and we had another missionary (David) and a Tico family (Francisco, Yolanda, and their son). It was so different from any Christmas that we have had, but I was so thankful that God had provided us with new friends to spend this special day with. Mom and I cooked all the day before and Christmas morning (sweet potato casserole, stuffing, salad, chicken supreme, pumpkin cheesecake, and red velvet cupcakes). I can say for our Tico friends that it was very different from the typical Costa Rican fare. A special shout out to Mom, Nana, and my best friend ,Teena, for the wonderful gifts of pecans and pumpkin that helped make the feast happen!

The children had an amazing morning of opening all their presents. Grammie brought a suitcase full and Nana sent a huge box from our family in Mobile with all kinds of goodies for the kids. It was such a wonderful surprise! The children had so much fun playing with all their new toys.

My favorite part of the whole day though was being with our new church family that night. They had a special Christmas service that evening and asked one of the other missionaries (Ash) to play guitar and me to play piano with the praise band. It was so wonderful to be a part of the praise team. Even though most evangelicals here do not sing many Christmas carols (usually only the Catholic churches sing the traditional carols), the pastor asked Ash and me to play a few of our traditional carols. We chose 3 that we knew were also sung in Spanish (Silent Night, Angels We Have Heard On High, and O Come All Ye Faithful). It was beautiful to listen to the people sing the words in Spanish as we sang them in English, praising the birth of our Savior together. Afterwards they had a Christmas dinner that started at 8:30pm. Believe it or not this is considered early by some Latinos. The food was sweet, and the fellowship even sweeter.

Dios le bendiga este nuevo año. (The Lord bless you this new year.)