Christmas in Costa Rica
Peace and joy for Christmas
By Franco Cartín Brenes

If one has been in Costa Rica for any years and almost transform to a “Tico”, this person begins to notice the fine distinctions that let sense a time of changes inside the Costaricans and Why not? in the hole country: The Christmas time.

You should also be able to make out this changes that we call “Beginning of the dry season”... The trade winds creep in the mountains and refresh the valleys, it bring clouds along and fill the sky with a dazzle cloud scenery, but overflowing with colors. This transition from raining to the dry season is Christmas!

The sunny days, the cool air and the missing of rain change the all day life and bring more festive and familiar flavored ambience. And people get ready, take their nicest dresses out of the wardrobe and exhibit for themselves and foreigners the old family traditions of their homes. Even if the traditions vary from house to house, from region to region, the Christmas spirit in Costa Rica spread over all, in one embrace, a visit y good wishes for the New Year; and probably predominant the same like the years before.

In the Central Valley the Costarican costumes have been maintaining in a very similar form, transmitted over generations. Today, the Christmas time is a syncretism of many cultures’ best costumes and the most delicious recipes that are combined to make the Christmas to a special date.

There is a lot to do for Christmas...

Beginning of December they open the dusty boxes that have been guarded for the last year in any wardrobe or garage, and arrange the “Portal” (Nativity Scene) and the Christmas tree (always is to search a glue to put on the ear of the sheep or a bit of lack for any nose, for the shepherd or the camel...). The tree always bring problems along, but the scratches and light bulbs one forget the moment you see the shining and surprised eyes of the children at the end of one story, that are the ones who lives Christmas time most intensive. In the house, the “Corona de Adviento”, the Christmas star is prepared, cypress branches with bow are hung up, and even if people do not have a own house, they arrange the “Portal” in the floor, the “Baby Jesus”, that will repair the own house. And if one time the house will be repaired, they have to put it up high, to thank for the succeeded house.

It’s dinnertime! A insuperable temptation.

In Costa Rica, like almost in every part of Latin America, all is celebrated around the table, all festivities are an excuse to celebrate the food And how! For Christmas the dinner is one of the highlights in this endless series of pleasures.

It starts with an interminable procession of “tamales de cerdo” (a corn pie with pork) and “mudos” (of kidney beans, without meat). For the dinner of the holy night the traditional dishes shouldn’t be missed, that go back of the meeting between precolombic natives and European conquerors, and that were mixed and adopted of the following immigrants. So, it’s easy to find, among the “hojas de plátano” (banana leafs) that warm up a “tamal” or “biscocho de queso” (cheese pie), exquisite deserts like one European fruit cake, with rum essences or almonds with orange taste that fill one really Italian “panetone”.
The “rompope casero” also is needed; a mixture of eggs, milk and rum that is drunk during the family dinner, to sustain the cool breezes of this time.

Let’s go out!

In Costa Rica the arriving of Christmas takes the people out to street life. In San Jose, like in many cities and villages in the hole country, festivities, turns and activities are organized, outside. From the first days of December all is filled up with lights and brilliancy and the municipal governments off all regions work hours extra to organize the celebrations in the last part of the year...

The “Festival de la Luz”

(Festival of Lights) is a mix of decorations and sparks, where firms and organizations compete with floats. This spectacular that goes through the Paseo Colon in San Jose astonishes young and old the same, illuminates the holy night with millions of lamp chimneys.

The carnival

is an event over and over full of colors, sounds, music and parades that remind of New Year’s closeness and which are to enjoy as long as the old goes on.

In the last days of December the streets of capital’s center are filled up with people that crowd together to see, feel and dance to rhythms of the carnival’s masquerades, the floats and the dancers which dissipate mirth and flavor, every step along the way. From the footways of the Paseo Colón, the Avenida Segunda up to the Plaza González Víquez, dancing groups, civil bands and floats with fabulous monsters and palms pass through the streets, draw smiles on lookers faces.

“El Tope”

is one of the most significant events in the festivities, the end of the year. In this beautiful show, full of the most representative horses from all over the land, the horses shine with its best harness, outfit and its elegant plaited manes. Riding, the horseman boasting about their animals among the competitors to draw applause and to show the special gaits, and at last to be the best.

There are festivities in Zapote!

For years this tradition attracts millions of people, national and international, in this region. To be in San Jose without visiting Zapote is unpardonable. The festivities in Zapote are full of different food tastes, fairgrounds, but over all are the “Corridas de toros” (bull-fighting without killing), and the fireworks show, weighty reasons to go - at least for one night - to this place.

Fervor and peace.

Between every crowd and celebration the Costarican people internalized this two strong precepts that are rooted in their faith. Because at the end of all, Christmas is a time to meditate about the most important: the birth of the infant Jesus, in a crib in Bethlehem. And this is what every family in Costa Rica commemorates, in any moment, in the intimacy of the home.