Mexico City for the Holidays

Our time in Mexico City (for the rest of this post, I’ll just use the abbreviation CDMX) lasted from the first part of December through the first week of January, meaning that’s where we were for the holidays. Traveling during the holidays is always pretty weird. Not as much for New Year’s Eve, since you can usually be somewhere with some sort of party going on, but being away from family during Christmas is sad. However, missing the months of gray rainy weather that’s winter in the Pacific Northwest is nice. I guess you can’t have your Christmas cake and eat it too.

Anyway, on to my story. CDMX (and Mexico in general, really) kicks off the Christmas season on December 12^th with “the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.” It actually kind of starts before then, since people from all over Mexico make the pilgrimage – by car, bike or foot – carrying pictures of the Virgin of Guadalupe, to her church in CDMX. I read something [citation needed] that said that around 2 million people would take mass there that day. So it’s kind of a big deal. We decided to make our way there. We went on the metro, not carrying pictures of the Virgin – just in case you were curious. It was an impressive sight, thousands of folks filling the courtyard of what is definitely one of the biggest churches I’ve ever seen.  In addition to taking mass, many tribes of Native Mexicans come to perform traditional music and dances in the courtyard. I have no idea how that fits into the tradition, but it was very cool to see.

As for Christmas, being a Catholic nation, Mexico takes Christmas pretty seriously, and didn’t skimp on the decorations, lights, poinsettias and piñatas (they’re a Christmas thing in Mexico, who knew?) everywhere. The central square was particularly done up, and even had an ice skating rink. Is it freezing in CDMX at Christmas? Nope. So they substituted ice for some sort of plastic flooring that looked like you could skate okay on it. As for how Elani and I celebrated, well, it was just a quiet dinner at home. Someone else’s home, actually. We managed to score ourselves a house-sitting gig for that week, so that meant having a bit more space, a larger kitchen and two friendly cats to look after. We took advantage of actually having an oven and had roast chicken. Not the usual spread of a big family dinner, but a nice dinner none the less.

New Year’s Eve was a bit more of a party. We headed down to the streets near the Angel of Independence where it was all going down. Block after block was packed, with loud music blearing. It was pretty cool to count down to midnight with thousands of other folks. But I must be getting old, because it was all a bit exhausting, and it wasn’t that long after midnight when we headed back to our apartment. One thing that was a bit disappointing was that they have evidently given up on the fireworks (well, the professional displays at any rate, there were plenty of amateur pyrotechnicians out that evening). I heard that a few years ago, the professional display actually hit one of the banking buildings nearby  –   apparently financial companies don’t like it when you hit their HQ with poorly aimed explosives. I guess you just can’t have any fun anymore. But it was still a good time, even if it was a little lacking in explosions.