La Navidad

Mañanitas

Mañanitas, meaning “little mornings”, are a perfect example of the Dominican culture. What Dominicans love more than anything are loud noises: loud motorcycles, loud voices, loud explosions, and especially loud music. They also love jumping on the bandwagon and praising the lord. What Dominicans have very little value for are such things like personal space, self awareness, noise pollution, noise violations, and a good nights sleep before work. This complex combination is what allows mañanitas to continue as a tradition year after year. What basically happens is at 4:00 am, a small group of people gather outside the Catholic Church with a collection of percussion instruments and begin marching up the street while singing merengue style Christmas carols. As the group proceeds up the street, more and more people come out of their homes and join the group until a massive parade is formed. If you’re in my community, Tubagua, the parade is accompanied by a truck with massive speakers blasting prerecorded Christmas carols with bass so loud you feel it in your chest. At selective houses, the group stops to sing a song that talks about opening the door until someone from inside wakes up and does just that. This ridiculous display of Christmas spirit continues until 6:00am when the group arrives back at the church just in time for mass in the dark. Mass ends at about 6:45am, just as the sun begins to rise. And as if 1 day of this wasn’t already enough, they do it for each of the 10 days leading up to Christmas Eve. Nobody gets a good night’s sleep for 10 days. So I say,if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

I had two friends stay over during this time who hadn’t yet learned of this tradition. Before we went to bed, I told them I had a surprise for them in the morning, but I didn’t tell them what it was. Like clockwork, the 200dB parade came bumping past my house, waking all of us up. My friends asked, “what in the hell is that!?!?” I told them to look out the window and they saw. I quickly explained what it was and told them to put their shoes on because we were about to join the party. Soon we were walking off into the darkness, half asleep, clapping our hands to the most fast paced Christmas song we’d ever heard.

Looking at this from the average sleeping person’s perspective, this ritual would certainly make the list of the top 10 most obnoxious things ever. Imagine if this happened in the U.S., in your neighborhood. People would most certainly get arrested or shot, or both. The church would be shut down and Christmas carols would be deemed illegal before 3:00pm. However, here in the D.R., those who party harder come out on top. And noise violations fall under the same classification as unicorns. This can even be seen in their politics. The politicians drive around big trucks with their giant face and name printed on the side while blasting the latest regaetón song, except with the lyrics changed to say something about voting for that politician. The politician who makes the most noise wins, simple. Political issues have little to no relevance.

Christmas, a time for sharing

What Dominicans are the best at is sharing. With any visit you make to a neighbors house comes a fresh juice or coffee. If a stranger on the public bus has one hard candy left, he or she will break it with their teeth and give you half. Sharing is embedded in the culture, and for this reason it is great to be in the DR for Christmas, because Christmas is a time for sharing. Christmas Eve is the big day here when the whole family gets together and eats a big feast. The traditional dishes during Christmas time are rotisserie pork, potato/yuka bake, apples, and grapes. On Christmas Eve I ate an early dinner with my neighbor, and then another dinner with my host family, who prepared an entire pig. I ate the pig’s tongue; is that gross? I stuffed myself until I couldn’t move. Later I went to another neighbor’s house where we shared spiked eggnog, wine, and skrewdrivers, and then found some more room to shove in some grilled chicken and hot dogs. This ended up not being the greatest combination because I woke up the next morning at 7am with a full belly and threw it all up. But it was totally worth it. I was eating leftover pork for 3 days until we finished every part of it including the ears, hooves, liver, heart, and intestines, and it was so delicious.

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! We’re still in need of donations for the library project, so if your New Years resolution is to help the needy, just visit the link below…

https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=517-403