Christmas In Puerto Rico

Har­vey Dee­gan Inter­view Click here to lis­ten to the interview!

Instead of a snow­man you can make a sand­man in 80° weather.

Today I had a unique expe­ri­ence. I spoke about Puer­to Rican Christ­mas tra­di­tions to an audi­ence that’s most­ly on the oth­er side of the plan­et. That’s right, this morn­ing I had the rare oppor­tu­ni­ty to speak with Har­vey Dee­gan, a radio per­son­al­i­ty with Radio 6PR in Perth, West­ern Australia.

This is the sec­ond time that I’ve been invit­ed to speak to an Aus­tralian audi­ence. The first time I spoke for close to an hour with Steve Collins, who pro­duces a show called “Radio Roam­ing”. Click here if you would like to read the post and lis­ten to that interview.

For many years I thought that the Puer­to Rican Christ­mas sea­son was the longest in the world, but Wikipedia proved me wrong. It’s actu­al­ly the Philip­pines who holds that dis­tinc­tion. But who cares? I like our Christ­mas bet­ter. I guess you could say that I’m biased.

Like many oth­er things in Puer­to Rico Christ­mas brings togeth­er a vari­ety of cul­tures and tra­di­tions. The Island was orig­i­nal­ly inhab­it­ed by the Taíno indi­ans who had a pre­dom­i­nant­ly veg­e­tar­i­an diet.

With the Spaniards and the Africans came pota­toes, plan­tains, olives, wheat, coconuts, sug­ar cane, pork, beef, chick­en and a vari­ety of spices like pep­per, oregano and parsley.

And what about the Amer­i­can diet? That too has been great­ly influ­en­tial on the Puer­to Rican diet but not so much when it comes to Christ­mas food. That’s main­ly a mix­ture of Taíno, Spaniard and African influences.

Roast­ed Pork

Take for exam­ple the typ­i­cal Christ­mas din­ner. You can expect a big piece of roast­ed pork, rice with pigeon peas, blood sausage, pick­led green bananas and “paste­les” (all on the same plate).

Paste­les

“Paste­les” are made of “masa” and meat fill­ing. “Masa” is made of grat­ed “yautías” (a type of root that we inher­it­ed from the Taínos), green bananas, some green plan­tain (both of which we inher­it­ed from Africa) and pump­kin (which we inher­it­ed from Spain). Some peo­ple add a lit­tle bit of milk to make it smoother. The meat fill­ing is made of stewed pork meat (also inher­it­ed from Spain). Final­ly, they are wrapped in banana leaves and boiled to perfection.

For dessert you can have some “arroz con dulce” (rice pud­ding), “tem­bleque” (a type of coconut pud­ding that has a con­sis­ten­cy sim­i­lar to jel­lo) or “majarete” (a thick cream made of rice flour and coconut).

Arroz con dulce (Rice Pudding)

And to wash it all down you can sim­ply have water, a reg­u­lar soda or bet­ter yet some “coquito” (a thick white bev­er­age made of coconut milk, cin­na­mon and rum). Most of the time your “coquito” will be made with one of the many legal rums that are pro­duced on the Island, but if you’re real­ly lucky it will be made with “pitor­ro” the ille­gal vari­ety that always seems to sur­face dur­ing the Christ­mas season.

Coquito

So how long is Christ­mas in Puer­to Rico? Well, it’s basi­cal­ly two months long. It all kicks off on Thanks­giv­ing Day and ends with the San Sebas­t­ian Street Fies­tas on the third week­end of January.

Thanks­giv­ing Day is a won­der­ful tra­di­tion that Puer­to Ricans inher­it­ed from the Unit­ed States when they invad­ed the Island in 1898. Of course, islanders have “puer­tor­i­can­ized” the bird quite a bit. They sea­son it with salt, pep­per and oregano, and many stuff it with “mofon­go” (mashed plan­tains with gar­lic and “chichar­rón” (roast­ed hog’s lard)). Yum!

The peri­od between Thanks­giv­ing Day and “Nochebue­na” (Christ­mas Eve) is when Puer­to Ricans tend to show how “Amer­i­can­ized” they real­ly are. One such Amer­i­can tra­di­tion that has real­ly caught on in Puer­to Rico is Black Fri­day, in which peo­ple stand in line for hours to be among the first to enter the depart­ment store of their choice at mid­night. Per­son­al­ly I find that this prac­tice is irra­tional and it exem­pli­fies one of the ugli­est sides of capitalism.

Decem­ber is all about San­ta. The jol­ly old guy real­ly takes over the stores and many peo­ple fall prey to the Christ­mas craze. Plas­tic runs wild dur­ing this peri­od and you can expect crowd­ed stores, long lines and very few park­ing spaces.

But all this craze is on the com­mer­cial front. On the “peo­ple” front it’s a total­ly dif­fer­ent sto­ry. Puer­to Ricans love to par­ty and Christ­mas is when they do it the most.

One tra­di­tion that refus­es to die is “par­ran­das” in which a group of friends (many of which are musi­cians) gets togeth­er to vis­it oth­er friends and fam­i­ly all through the night and wake them to the tune of Puer­to Rican Christ­mas music. Per­son­al­ly, I play the gui­tar, and I used to par­tic­i­pate in “par­ran­das” quite a lot when I was a young man. But the pro­lif­er­a­tion of gat­ed com­mu­ni­ties in the San Juan Metro­plex has tak­en its toll on “par­ran­das” (there’s no longer the ele­ment of sur­prise) and today they main­ly take place in the small­er inner island towns.

Even so, Christ­mas is a time when friends and fam­i­ly get togeth­er to eat Christ­mas food, drink (some­times more than they should), lis­ten to music and enjoy the com­pa­ny of good people.

After Christ­mas day the next big event is New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. There’s noth­ing very dif­fer­ent here except one thing: some peo­ple find it amus­ing to shoot their weapons into the sky and —as you might imag­ine— this has led to ran­dom injuries in the past.

Nor­mal­ly oth­er tourism blogs might not men­tion this sort of thing because they fear it might scare tourists away. But remem­ber, in Puer­to Rico By GPS we tell it like it is. I should also say that the Island’s gov­ern­ment has tak­en a firm stance against this prac­tice and in recent years it has been a lot less prevalent.

Even so, in Puer­to Rico most hous­es are made of con­crete and I have always insist­ed that every mem­ber of my fam­i­ly spend the last half hour of the year and the first half hour of the com­ing year under a con­crete roof.

The Three Wise Men

The first six days of Jan­u­ary lead to the cel­e­bra­tion of “El Día De Los Tres Reyes Magos” (the three wise men day). Puer­to Rico inher­it­ed this tra­di­tion from Spain and it has been an offi­cial hol­i­day since 1885. It has its ori­gins in the Old Tes­ta­ment and the sto­ry of the group of dis­tin­guished for­eign­ers who vis­it­ed Jesus after his birth, bear­ing gifts of gold, frank­in­cense and myrrh.

This tra­di­tion is also an offi­cial hol­i­day in Spain and in oth­er Latin Amer­i­can coun­tries like Mex­i­co, the Domini­can Repub­lic, Paraguay, Uruguay, Colom­bia and Venezuela.

By this time of year most Amer­i­cans will be back at work try­ing to get rid of those extra pounds that they gained dur­ing the Christ­mas sea­son. Many Puer­to Ricans will also be try­ing to lose weight but there will still be plen­ty of par­ty­ing going on.

San Sebas­t­ian Street Fies­tas. Click on image to see it larger.

After Jan­u­ary 6th Christ­mas is offi­cial­ly over in Puer­to Rico but many Islanders squeeze in eight more days that they call “las octavi­tas”. Like many oth­er Christ­mas tra­di­tions on the Island “las octavi­tas” have their roots in Catholic faith but today they’ve sim­ply evolved into one more rea­son to party.

And then there’s “Las Fies­tas De La Calle San Sebas­t­ian”. This four day event brings togeth­er thou­sands and thou­sands of peo­ple on a one-lane street in Old San Juan. “Las Fies­tas De La Calle San Sebas­t­ian” were start­ed by father Juan Manuel Madra­zo and Mrs. Rafaela Bal­ladares as a fundrais­er for the “Cole­gio de Párvu­los”, a small school on the west­ern end of San Sebas­t­ian Street.

Lat­er on it grew into what it is today: an arti­san fair with food, lots of alco­holic bev­er­ages, music and so many peo­ple that it’s even hard to walk. You sim­ply move with the mass­es. It has become the largest out­door event in the world tak­ing place dur­ing the month of January.

So there you have it. It all starts with an inno­cent turkey and it grows and grows into one of the largest par­ties in the world. And all this with an aver­age tem­per­a­ture of 80° Faren­heit. Isn’t it great!

So if you’re look­ing for a place to have some fun in the sun this Christ­mas, instead of endur­ing those nasty cold fronts that the weath­er­man is fore­cast­ing, come over to sun­ny Puer­to Rico.

Mer­ry Christmas,

©2014,Orlando Mer­gal, MA
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Bilin­gual Con­tent Cre­ator, Blog­ger, Pod­cast­er,
Author, Pho­tog­ra­ph­er and New Media Expert
Tel. 787–750-0000, Mobile 787–306-1590