Presents, piñatas and Paxo: A Mexican family Christmas:

¡ Feliz Navidad!

Christmas. Whilst I love the festive season I loathe spending it away from home.

I can’t help missing everything about a good ol’ traditional British Christmas - friends and family, presents, rotten weather, Bond repeats on telly and the stuffing. Especially the stuffing.

So if we were to have to spend this Christmas away then we would have to find a nice place to spend. And where better than Mexico.

A country full of devout Catholics, Christmas is huge in Mexico. The whole country is swathed in festive bling; as we travelled down from the north every village, town and city we passed through seemed to be indulging in festive celebrations which would put little old Blighty in the shade.

It was therefore with considerable anticipation that we approached the great megalopolis of Mexico City.

And not a little trepidation either. Mexico City is a massive place - with 18 million inhabitants it’s the second biggest city in the world (by population), a huge, sprawling, urban mass devouring all in its path as it expands in its seemingly inexorable quest to meet the needs of its residents.

This doesn’t make it an instantly lovable place for visitors, nor the most liveable for its residents, suffering as it does from high levels of pollution.

The city is also afflicted with more than its fair share of pollution and crime. We had been warned that it was a bit ‘edgy‘, not to venture into certain parts after dark, to leave our credit cards behind, and to take taxis everywhere, making sure you lock the doors once inside.

If what the locals did were anything to go by this was prudent advice: most residents seem to hide themselves away behind heavy metal gates, set into high walls lined with barbed wire.

No wonder the British felt that there was only one man up to the job of British ambassador here. Who else but a Paxman (in this case Jeremy’s brother Giles) could fearlessly represent his country’s interests in such a foreboding place?

With Paxo at the helm, surely we were safe and could focus fully on the festivities instead, spending the Christmas period with an old university chum, Monica, and her family .

It was to be a wonderful and very memorable occasion.

Unlike in Britain, the big day for Mexicans is the 24th, Christmas Eve. We arrived the day before and despite Christmas being a family occasion we were welcomed into their home with open arms.

The whole family had gathered for the festivities, four generations represented, from a delightful grandmother to a wide-eyed two year old, all arms and legs, the goo flowing permanently out of his mouth.

Mother was there, smiling benignly on proceedings and patiently attending to the many pans bubbling away on the stove, along with five of her eight brothers and sisters and their attendant husbands and wives.

Then there were their various children, shy teenagers and a mob of younger kids with a worrying predilection for running through the crowded rooms, high on sugar and the promise of presents.

And the family pets, a menagerie of a dog, a cat, a vociferous parrot and 4 tiny caged birds, housed in the outhouse toilet.

Together we all squeezed into the rambling house, part of traditional old Mexican courtyard,
bequeathed to the family by the grandfather, along with a large collection of dusty old lathes and stand drills which lined the entrance.

Ancient old motors lined the street outside, coated in dust, their tyres long flat. Inside the festive decorations lined every available surface and hung from every hook. Even the toilet seats had suitably seasonal covers.

It wouldn’t be Christmas of course without a tipple and our wonderful hosts soon introduced us to bountiful stock of booze at their disposal. The fridge groaned with a whole host of Mexican beers, many of them new to our palates.

Uncle Beto and Aunt Elizabeth went one further than this and introduced us to the pleasure of their sizeable mini-bar, a Bacchanalian banquet to rival the food. Rum, whisky, vodka, advocaat (a uniquely festive drink) and of course tequila.

They seemed to have them all, every fearsome variant of the local firewater, each distilled from a modest little cactus and guaranteed to send one’s head spinning.

“This is my favourite”, Uncle Beto told us, fondling a particularly weighty dark bottle, Tres Generaciones.
I politely supped the fearsome liquor I was passed, the memories of too many messy nights out still too strong to indulge uninhibited. Lara, on the other hand, eagerly swigged away, mixing it with a rather briny red liquid called Sangrita (‘little blood’). They colour it bright red for a reason.

Suitably tanked up we were then invited across the road to Uncle and Auntie’s house where we all sang a posada (hostel) song, a traditional song which, as I understood it, represents the pilgrimage of Mary and Joseph.

Everyone merrily sang back and forth, one group the ‘pilgrims‘, the other the ‘hostel keepers’ whilst I mumbled embarrassingly along, wondering what on earth I was singing about.

This merry ritual over, we were then invited to participate in another Mexican Christmas tradition: the piñata game, or smashing the hell out of a papier mache figure dangling from a rope, with a great big stick in a bid to get at the sweets inside.

It’s not as simple as it sounds of course: alongside the alcohol coursing through one’s veins one has to contend with wearing a blindfold, being spun around until nicely disoriented and thence having to jump up thrashing wildly into the air as one of the Uncle‘s teasingly tugs the rope up and down.

As we made complete fools of ourselves, our fellow revellers sang another song, which loosely translates as: “Hit it, hit it hit it, don’t you lose your aim.”

Of course I did and hit the piñata - this one fiendishly based around a heavy ceramic pot - with my hand.

Dizzy, nauseous and numb with pain I happily passed the heavy wooden stick onto the next person who proceeded to smash the piñata into smithereens. The pieces shattered over a nearby car, setting off the alarms; the sweets inside exploded out all over the lawn, prompting an excitable feeding frenzy amongst children and adults alike.

The danger wasn’t over however, as someone then produced some fireworks and a laidback cousin in a leather jacket proceeded to light them in a rather lacksidasical manner.

Lethal lights and gunpowder fizzed all over the cardboard box they were placed upon, showering everyone in sparks and ricocheting off the walls of the confined space in which we were all gathered.

I cowered with granny behind the safety of a patio door. The kids loved it and eagerly grabbed the sparklers for an encore, great enormous sticks almost three foot long. A particularly young member of the family seemed to delight in the danger, carving great spaces out of the air, hair sizzling, eyeballs searing.

No wonder fireworks are banned in this city.

I was relieved to retreat back inside, as we approached the great present-giving ceremony.

Somehow, everyone squeezed into the small living room, crammed on and around two sofas, lounging in doorways, perched on stairwells.

A massive stack of presents awaited us, a mound big enough to rival the city’s great pyramid of Teotihuacan. Surely we’d be going all the way through into the New Year if we were to tackle all this lot.

Wrong. The family had a cunning answer to this problem: speed present-giving. A present is picked, the receiver gets ten seconds (counted down by everyone else) to unwrap it before they must select a new present and give it to that receiver, and so on, and so on.

It’s genius. No long, meandering hours of lingering over new socks and unwanted oven gloves. Just a frantic ripping of paper, a quick nod of thanks and on to the next.

And it’s great fun. Everyone gleefully gave and received. Everyone got something they wanted, something they didn’t want and something they never expected. I think my present of some chilli-flavoured crickets must surely fall into the third category.

Finally, the mountain was levelled. Midnight struck and it was time to eat.

This being Mexico there were huge amounts of food. Industrial quantities. It was as if they were expecting the entire city to turn up.

There was a mountain of mashed cod, a steaming heap of potatoes, a great forest of salad, a groaning basket of bread, a huge school of prawns, great lakes of mole and several large dishes of spaghetti.

There was a turkey of course, one that looked as if it had been pumped up on steroids and primed to take on Rocky Balbao and, just in case you were left feeling a bit peckish after all this, a choice of three different delicious puddings.

I dug in with the rest of the family, blissfully gorging myself on this medieval feast. After six months on the road my instincts seem to have reprogrammed themselves to resemble those of a wild animal, prompting me to feed frantically whenever the opportunity presents itself.

It was a good job I did too: with several charming Mexican mothers surrounding this scrawny Englishman - hardly a carbon copy of the typically tubby Mexican male - found it hard to refuse their kind, concerned insistence to try just one more spoonful…

But the best was yet to come. A familiar smell wafted in to the room: stuffing!

Shipped in fresh from a little Leicester delicatessen called Tesco. It had been lovingly prepared, gently cooked with thin slices of ham around it, and was devoured in an instant. An big hit with the Mexicans.

No wonder they put Paxo in charge in this town.



* Many thanks to the wonderful Rodriguez family for kindly hosting us over Christmas and giving us such a marvellous time