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I’ve never had the pleasure of being in another
country during Christmas, but I love learning how other cultures and
nationalities celebrate the holiday. My book Secrets of a Mayan Moon is set in Guatemala in the jungle
and not during the holiday, but I wondered how Christmas was celebrated and
gathered snippets from the blog, Guatemalan Genes. http://blog.guatemalangenes.com/ The
woman who writes the blog, Cynthia, was born in Guatemala, lived in the U.S.
for a while, and then moved back to her country. She helped me keep things authentic in Secrets of a Mayan Moon when I couldn’t travel to the area.
There are many recipes that are served in Guatemala
during the holiday on Cynthia’s blog so I won’t put any here, you can find them
under her Christmas posts.
One of the interesting stories I learned about a Guatemalan Christmas is the Misa de Gallo, or Mass of the Rooster.
This sounds strange thinking of a rooster as being linked to Christmas and a
mass. The Guatemalan legend says that at midnight Christmas Eve as the baby
Jesus was born a rooster crowed. Everyone knows that roosters don’t crow at
midnight, they crow when the sun is coming up in the morning. Because of this
reality, “Midnight” mass is held early in the morning when the roosters really
do crow
.
The other interesting event that Guatemalan’s do to
celebrate, which is what you find in the United States during the Fourth of
July and New Year’s Eve, they have fireworks displays at midnight. I’ve found this to be true of other countries
such as the Netherlands.
