Christmas in Belize

Imagine Christmas without external pressure. No store aisles with Christmas decorations on or before Halloween. No constant messages to buy, buy, buy! No conflict between religious and secular celebrations. Christmas without guilt that you haven’t met someone else’s expectations – which have been generated in part by rampant commercialism. It is possible in Placencia to celebrate Christmas as much, or as little, as you wish, and however you wish to do it..


And what a nice holiday I’ve had! My focus for the last several weeks has been on the move into my new abode, packing and moving my stuff, purchasing fixtures, appliances and furniture, and then waiting for the fixtures to be installed, and the great room to be painted off-white and dark red to replace the pink. Here are some photos of the inside, taken from various vantage points:

The owner bought a wonderful stove with my assistance, a gas stove with a gas convection oven. It was finally installed on Saturday the 18th. Since then, I’ve made two batches of cookies, buttermilk biscuits, two apple pies and a sour cream coffee cake. So nice to have a good oven!

Although I have three totes of Christmas decorations I brought with me from the states, I only got out my reindeer, pictured here, and a moose that sings jingle bells when you squeeze its paw. Next year I’ll probably do more, but it has been nice spreading the gift of fine baked goods instead of store bought stuff.

So my celebration started several days ago with my baking. On Wednesday eve I maintained my personal tradition of watching a video that was first shown on PBS some years ago; a wonderful adaptation of Dylan’s A Child’s Christmas in Wales. In addition to the text, it is a visual and audible treat. The afternoon of Christmas Eve I baked two apple pies and the biscuits, and took a pie and the biscuits to Bradley’s house for Christmas dinner. It didn’t turn out to be a sit-down type dinner, but was more a serve yourself deal, in part because there were several other people who had been invited over, and there was a lot of drinking going on.


Here's a photo of the operations manager of our butane biusiness
:

I left at about 9 PM, and went home to wrap gifts until midnight. I chose to wrap everything twice because the only gift wrap left when I finally got around to buying it was transparent. So I had to pre-wrap to hide contents, and then wrap for decorative effect.

Christmas morning I rose early and made a sour cream coffee cake (thank you Georgia’s friend Jill!) and took it to Bradley’s. I enjoyed having Christmas in a house dominated by three small kids. Here are some photos:

(The adults in these pictures are Rilda, Bradley's wife, and Patti, my ex-wife.)

By 10:30 or so all the gifts had been distributed and opened, and it was time to head home. It was nice to return to a quiet space. Christmas afternoon I joined a small group of ex-pats in Placencia for a fine Christmas dinner, punctuated with my other apple pie. Then home again at 5 or 6, and another enjoyable evening at home with my new books, A Ship of Fools from my good friends Mikki and David, and The Hemingses of Monticello from stepdaughter (?) Kevan.

Most of my time at home has been accompanied by music- as I mentioned in my last post the acoustics are wonderful, and I’ve been enjoying my wide-ranging Christmas music collection.

Today, Saturday, I have finished arranging stuff in my abode, finding places to put stuff. It’s nice to have it near done. This afternoon a flock of pink flamingos landed in my yard, and I had a chance to snap a photo:

So that’s been my Christmas. Wonderfully mellow. I haven’t missed the snow, or the disappointment at the lack of snow, that marked the first 63 years of my life.