It’s Christmastime in Santa Clara. That means that not much has changed from normal life. The main differences are: the church carries the Baby Jesus around in a procession to raise money, it’s sunny (the rainy season is from April/May to September/October). I can remember the feeling of the last rain and the first sunshine that proclaimed, somehow, that the sunshine had returned por cierto tiempo. I love the sun in Santa Clara. Yes it gets cloudy up here because we live more than 7,000 feet up, but the province of Sololá is a sunny place. And I love the feeling of weightlessness that I feel when I am walking in the clear sunshine. It’s not a heavy, oppressive sun: it’s happy sunshine.

But two nights ago something terrible happened. My neighbors, my uncle and aunt and host cousins, put Christmas lights up on their balcony. NO YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND. I love Christmas lights as much as the next US American but these lights are meant for a Christmas TREE, not a house. I will explain: there is music that plays when the lights come on. The lights play from about 8pm-10pm, and the speaker for the lights is 1 complete cubic foot from my bedroom window. This house and my house are connected, and I am on the second floor so my bedroom window is on the balcony and the lights they put on their balcony are, well, on the balcony. 

And the music plays “Jingle Bells Jingle Bells then Santa Clause is Coming to Town then We Wish You a Merry Christmas then two songs I don’t know and then, just like the unrelentless sunshine, it loops back and starts again. Of all the sounds, the rooster upstairs whose song bounces down the cement steps and invades my room morning, noon and night, the sound of the pigs being butchered across the street, the EMERGENCY SIREN that plays on Wednesdays during trash pick-up, the evangelical music that goes until 11pm on Sundays, Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, chuchos fighting or jugaring (that means what you think it means), even chuchos being hit and scurrying away, is less annoying to me than the Christmas music on a loop that invades my bedroom window. P.S. I hate it when they mistreat the chuchos and I regañar anyone who I see mistreating them. I also regañar the butchers for the horrible way they treat these beautiful pigs… and I cut pork from my diet…. BUT WHAT CAN I DO ABOUT THIS PERPETUAL CHRISTMAS CHEER COMING INTO MY WINDOW. NOTHING. EXCEPT COMPLAIN to my host sister. 

Without me knowing, she knocked on her cousin’s door and said: “Hey. Can y’all change that horrible Christmas music because the speaker sits right outside Natalie’s window.” May there be a God above… This culture is so passive and so inured to bulla: loud annoying noise, that I thought I had to sit and take it. But some things surprise you. And that was my Christmas miracle. P.S. the music still plays but I think they put tape on it or rearranged the strand so the music sits on the other side of the balcony. Either way, nothing but gratitude. Santa Claus is coming to town but I don’t have to reminded all night long.