Advent Calendar: Noche Buena

Advent Calendar:

Dec 24
NOCHE BUENA

Noche Buena (the good night) is "Christmas Eve night", our traditional family and party night. It's also a "poinsettia", which is, of course, the Christmas flower. (Capicu.) It is usually kicked off with a traditional family dinner. In our Jersey days, the immediate families would have dinner at home and then trek off to Irvington to Tio Alfonso and Tia Celina's to party their asses off. But whether it was at Tia's or at home, the Christmas feast was probably keynoted by a Lechon (Roast Pig) and Arroz (rice) con Gandules (pigeon peas) or rice and beans (and, in keeping with Tio's Cuban heritage they would be black beans), pasteles, morcilla, and, for dessert, arroz con dulce and a ton of other sweets.

Advent Calendar: The holiday meal

Advent Calendar:

Dec 23
THE HOLIDAY MEAL

My step-father was called The Old Man as both an epithet and term or endearment, a comment on his age and on his status as the head of the house. My mother was a seamstress who worked at home. For pretty much all of our lives, he was our contact with the real world.

He worked as a letter carrier and had some sort of posh route on Madison Avenue in New York. He probably got the nice route by virtue of his responsible nature. You could hear him rattling pots and pans at 4 am as he set out from Jersey City to make the trek to New York. Even in a blizzard he'd still get there. I bet he never missed more than four days in the many many years he worked for them and this only because of some sort of city shutdown.

He had a habit of bringing things home that he might run into while at work. Interesting things, like horse meat. Just to try it. He loved gadgets and electronics (I remember one year he bought home a thing to make your television a color television which was actually a piece of acetate that you pasted on the front of the tv.) and especially his cars, which you could find him shining on any Saturday morning.

One holiday - I'm not sure if it was to cuts costs or if someone gave it to him - he brought home a live duck or a goose. Whatever it was, it was a huge animal. The plan was that they would have a fresh-killed dinner like the ones in PR. I must have been about 4 or 5, making Papo 3 or 2, Eddie one year less, etc.

At any rate we were really little kids, living with our parents in this small New York City apartment and so we set out to watch the spectacle of the old man killing this thing he had just brought home.

He puts it into the bathtub. And maybe it was because it was so huge you can't kill it like you kill a chicken, by wringing its neck, or maybe he just doesn't remember his campesino days. But, for whatever reason he takes an ax and whacks its head off.

All hell breaks loose. This thing starts jerking, squalling and shrieking so hard it surprises him and, in a panic, he let's go. It comes up out of the bathtub like some sort of Phoenix. My brother and I run away in terror, covering our heads as this thing flies around the apartment spewing blood, shit, and innards over everything, finally collapsing somewhere.

I miss my family. "The visit" was an at-least-once-weekly occurrence and, especially so during holidays. An ever-ubiquitous function was the sun around which our family orbited. So, during the holidays especially, I do a lot of reminiscing. This is one of my favorite and earliest anecdotes. Not because it went so swimmingly, because, obviously, it didn't. But because it's another vibrant memory of the many characters with whom I share a past. Along the way we all screw up, sometimes inadvertently, sometimes not. But in the end, we're family and it's these memories, the good, the bad and the "EH", the makes my family so special to me.

Advent Calendar: Dancing

Advent Calendar:

Dec 22
DANCING

Well, where there is music there is a Puerto Rican dancing. We dance from early on. We are just as ubiquitous at parties as children.

CHECK THIS VIDEO OUT

Advent Calendar: Pudin

Advent Calendar:

Dec 21
PUDIN

Okay, my desserts chauvinsm is on much weaker grounds when it comes to bread pudding, especially since we have New Orleans in our back yard. That having been said, ours is better. It's smoother, has a creamier and sweeter consistency. It, like flan, is part of many a year round real meal but at Christmas, it is one of the staples. The rice and bread puddings baking completely tantalized us throughout the day. If we wheedled enough we might even get a mid-day snack. In PR the best pudin used to come from Oasis on the western end, I think Aguada.

Advent Calendar: Dominoes

Advent Calendar:

Dec 20
DOMINOES

I spent Sunday playing dominoes with my brother and brother-in-law. Dominoes aren't just for Christmas. They are for any spare time and it's a game we play from our earliest days. It is our national past time. "That's a capicu," he tells me, teaching me one more thing about our culture along the way. I just put a special finesse on him, he explains. A capicu is, at least where I'm concerned, a lucky accident, a lagniappe, a "win-win". When you "capicu" you get an extra hundred points. It's a coup de grace, the ultimate indignity you can put on your opponent, playing your tiles so synchronously that at the end your last tile can be played on either end. Capicu! I do not play the game well. Hell, at family functions they pass me along as a burden. "I can't play with him, he's stupid," they'll say. All in fun, of course, but nonetheless true. These guys play dominoes like it's some sort of high-level chess or bridge and I'm usually just bumbling around while they chortle at making me play so-and-so tile. Yeah, we play dominoes year round, but, at Christmastime when all the folks are home there are domino marathons involving every element of the family. It's a round robin where everyone gets to play, relax, and spend real quality time with each other. And that, my friends, is a real capicu.

Here's a great domino page

Advent Calendar: Parrandas

Advent Calendar:

Dec 17
PARRANDAS

We are music, you and I. And, I, the music, am especially raucous in the Caribbean where PRs (and Cubans and Dominicans), make up for more than a fair share of the sonic din. And at Christmas time - get this - we step it up. Salsa. Timba. Bachata. Merengue. They are all part of the frenzied party that is the holidays. But if you’re really lucky you are rewarded by being further sensually assaulted.
You’d be treated to a parranda that is. Part Mardi Gras, part hootenanny, a parranda or an asalto navideño (nativity assault) is an instantaneous party that is visited on you in the middle of the night. And, while the more typical musical forms might be played, it is a celebration of our agrarian roots. The instrumentation is purely Puerto Rican as are the forms of the music themselves, PR folk genres clearly associated with Christmas, like the Aguinaldo and the Decima.
As a young man I moved to Puerto Rico, finding myself one Christmas living on the rural west end of the island. My uncle, a musician, would be invited to partake in these instantaneous parties. A tremendous cuatro musician, he and his equally fabulous guitar-playing son Felix were in heavy demand. (We'd have to sneak Felix out so as not to infuriate my Pentacostal aunt.) People would anxiously confirm with him as to when they could schedule a parranda as a surprise for some loved one. And he was eager to please. Every night for a month we would haunt the barrios like some merry pranksters. Now, as a little rock and roll thug from New Jersey you wouldn't think this would interest me. You'd be wrong. This was so fascinating, culturally, musically, and in every possible way. We’d gather somewhere, park the cars, and silently schlep up some mountainside, springing our blitz festival. The host would beam because it is considered a compliment that someone thinks enough about you to do this. And it is. The host would bring out the food, the ron pitorro (white lightning) and IT WAS ON. The whole barrio would wake up and we’d party till the Roosters crowed. Best damned month of my life.