Christmas in Argentina
As we continue our travels to see how Christmas is uniquely celebrated around the world, our first destination this year was Argentina. The day began with learning about a unique custom in Argentina in that artificial Christmas trees should be replaced every seven years. In fact, it’s considered bad luck if you don’t. Ours is well past that and has been showing its age for a while, so we gave it the heave ho ho ho and found ourselves a new (artificial) family tree.
Another Argentina decorating tradition is using cotton balls as decorations to represent snow since Christmas falls during the middle of their summer. So we got Miles & Edison in the Christmas tree decorating game by having them decorate their own miniature Target trees with cotton balls, just like they would in Argentina. And we added a fun Minute to Win It game featuring cotton balls as well. It’s called “Snow Shoveling” and is an homage to their cotton ball “snow” as well as their affinity for barbecuing their Christmas dinners due to the summertime season. To play “Snow Shoveling”, contestants are blindfolded and then have one minute to “shovel” with a grilling spatula as much “snow” as they can from the table and onto their barbecue serving tray. It was a perfect game for nearly any age!
We learned that on Christmas Eve in Argentina, it’s often a big party across the country. Restaurants and bars shut down and the featured scene turns to incredible tango shows and masquerade balls that host all night celebrations. If you’re not going to a Christmas tango, then you’re probably joining a family get together for an incredible feast. And it was a feast of some of the most unusual foots we’ve made including beef tongue and veal, which I can attest are not normally on our shopping lists. Our courses that we made throughout the day included some of Argentina’s most traditional holiday dishes including Pionono (savory Swiss roll), Lengua (marinated beef tongue), and the most famous Vitel Tone (slices of veal served with a creamy anchovy and tuna sauce). Desserts are famous around Christmas as well in Argentina and we had a full spread of Pan de Budin (bread pudding), turrone, alfajores, and (of course) the festive and regionally appropriate “Andes” mints.
Christmas in Argentina really is a festive and raucus season. There are lots of fireworks and sparklers and toasts of champagne throughout the late hours Christmas Eve. We didn’t exactly have fireworks available (nor would we want to with two-year-old twins), but we settled for sparklers to light up the sky. And we also incorporated the very traditional globos paper lanterns that we lifted into the sky… as well as a champagne toast or two for mommy and daddy just like a true Argentine would.
But we weren’t quite done with our fiery displays. For the grand finale, we “travelled” to the city of La Plata, where there is a December tradition involving locals spending dozens if not hundreds of hours building huge paper and cardboard dolls and dioramas, often commemorating or lampooning fictional characters, politicians, etc… Those massive dolls and scenes are then set on fire at the end of the season’s festivities in an evening of fiery glory across the entire town. It’s called “Quema de Muñecos”. This was the perfect opportunity to continue our fiery annual Christmas tradition of burning the Swedish Gavle goat. But instead of a straw goat, this year we followed the method of La Plata and created a paper mache goat…. that we subsequently burned to the ground.
ACTIVITIES:
Cotton Ball Snowflake Crafts
Build Paper Mache Gavle Goat & Burn It Down
Set-Up New Christmas Tree
White Globos Lanterns
“Snow Shoveling” Game” Blindfolded Spatula Cotton Ball Scoop Minute to Win It
FOOD:
Pannetone for Breakfast
Canapes Navidad
Andes Mints
Alfajores
Clerico Sangria, Champagne, Malbec
