hey move it, hey shove it.
My family starts celebrating all our libra and scorpio birthdays in October and early November. Then, the official navidades start the day after Thanksgiving (and NO, this has nothing to do with Black Friday and everything to do with Puerto Ricans having party in our blood). In December, there are Aguinaldos from the 17th - 24th, Nochebuena (Xmas Eve), Navidad (Xmas Day)on the 25th, on December 28th, Día de los Santos Inocentes (according to Christian scripture, the mass infanticide ordered by Herod the Great) and stemming from this, el Festival de las Máscaras in Hatillo (which is supposed to ward off evil spirits and is similar to April Fools Day). Then, there's Despedida de Año/ Año Viejo/ Víspera de Año Nuevo -New Year's Eve, then, of course, New Year's Day and celebration of the Three Kings/ Epiphany on January 5th - 6th, followed by Las Octavitas. During these 8 days, we visit family with parrandas and trullas, we deliver gifts to thsoe that we didn't see during Christmas and we're thankful to have gotten through the holidays and into a new year healthy and happy, surrounded by friends and family.
This is supposedly the end of las navidades, but as Puerto Ricans are known for not wanting to give up our fiestas, we extend them with the famous Fiestas de la Calle San Sebastián, which stem from another religious feast day, but with 1,000s of artesanos selling their arts, crafts, jewelry, etc and over 300,000 people eating, drinking, dancing and partying in the streets of Old San Juan, it gets downright rowdy and I'm not really sure how it celebrates Sebastián the martyr, but it's one of PR's most popular fiestas and the most fun you'll ever have on the island in one weekend! Officially, all the partying culminates on February 2nd with the feast of La Candelaria and Candlemas (also religious traditions) during which Christmas trees are burned and the holidays are put to rest until the next year.
Away from the island, the holidays are just so low-key and sad for me. Eating, drinking, being (really) merry, hanging out with all the cousins, the vecinos, the extended family is the best part of the year. It's one party after another and no matter, how little the party starts out, it's always fun and goes on into the wee hours of the night usually culminating in a parranda, when we decide it's time to go wake up the neighbors, friends and family that aren't at the party by arriving on their doorsteps with an assortment of musical instruments and singing in exchange for a very late night supper and hopefully, a shot (or 5) of coquito, rum or some other seasonal bebida.
If I'm not in PR for las navidades, I'm sulking at home thinking about all the fun I had last navidades with all my cousins, friends and family and thinking about how much I miss them. It may be hard to understand what las navidades are all about on the island especially if you've never witnessed them. Yes, it's a little commercialized (as is Xmas all over the US), but more than that, it's just the time of year, when everyone's happy and you smile and of course, accept when even your worst neighbor comes a knocking with a bottle of coquito or PR's very own moonshine, pitorro/ cañita.
And, of course, the holidays away from the island are fun, but it's just not the same. Sure, go home and stay there is what you're probably thinking...sunny, tropical, never winter. I must be crazy to live away from it right? Well, that's another story about yet another way that mi islita is so different from the rest of the US.
Eve Ensler, the American playwright, performer, feminist and activist best known for "The Vagina Monologues", wrote the following about Sarah Palin:
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I am having Sarah Palin nightmares. I dreamt last night that she was a member of a club where they rode snowmobiles and wore the claws of drowned and starved polar bears around their necks. I have a particular thing for Polar Bears. Maybe it's their snowy whiteness or their bigness or the fact that they live in the arctic or that I have never seen one in person or touched one. Maybe it is the fact that they live so comfortably on ice. Whatever it is, I need the polar bears. I don't like raging at women. I am a Feminist and have spent my life trying to build community, help empower women and stop violence against them. It is hard to write about Sarah Palin.
This is why the Sarah Palin choice was all the more insidious and cynical. The people who made this choice count on the goodness and solidarity of Feminists.
But everything Sarah Palin believes in and practices is antithetical to feminism which for me is part of one story -- connected to saving the earth, ending racism, empowering women, giving young girls options, opening our minds, deepening tolerance, and ending violence and war.
I believe that the McCain/Palin ticket is one of the most dangerous choices of my lifetime, and should this country chose those candidates the fall-out may be so great, the destruction so vast in so many areas that America may never recover. But what is equally disturbing is the impact that duo would have on the rest of the world. Unfortunately, this is not a joke.
In my lifetime I have seen the clownish, the inept, the bizarre be elected to the presidency with regularity. Sarah Palin does not believe in evolution. I take this as a metaphor. In her world and the world of Fundamentalists nothing changes or gets better or evolves. She does not believe in global warming. The melting of the arctic, the storms that are destroying our cities, the pollution and rise of cancers, are all part of God's plan. She is fighting to take the polar bears off the endangered species list. The earth, in Palin's view, is here to be taken and plundered. The wolves and the bears are here to be shot and plundered. The oil is here to be taken and plundered. Iraq is here to be taken and plundered. As she said herself of the Iraqi war, "It was a task from God."
Sarah Palin does not believe in abortion. She does not believe women who are raped and incested and ripped open against their will should have a right to determine whether they have their rapist's baby or not.
She obviously does not believe in sex education or birth control. I imagine her daughter was practicing abstinence and we know how many babies that makes.
Sarah Palin does not much believe in thinking. From what I gather she has tried to ban books from the library, has a tendency to dispense with people who think independently. She cannot tolerate an environment of ambiguity and difference. This is a woman who could and might very well be the next president of the United States. She would govern one of the most diverse populations on the earth.
Sarah believes in guns. She has her own custom Austrian hunting rifle. She has been known to kill 40 caribou at a clip. She has shot hundreds of wolves from the air.
Sarah believes in God. That is of course her right, her private right. But when God and Guns come together in the public sector, when war is declared in God's name, when the rights of women are denied in his name, that is the end of separation of church and state and the undoing of everything America has ever tried to be.
I write to my sisters. I write because I believe we hold this election in our hands. This vote is a vote that will determine the future not just of the U.S., but of the planet. It will determine whether we create policies to save the earth or make it forever uninhabitable for humans. It will determine whether we move towards dialogue and diplomacy in the world or whether we escalate violence through invasion, undermining and attack. It will determine whether we go for oil, strip mining, coal burning or invest our money in alternatives that will free us from dependency and destruction. It will determine if money gets spent on education and healthcare or whether we build more and more methods of killing. It will determine whether America is a free open tolerant society or a closed place of fear, fundamentalism and aggression.
If the Polar Bears don't move you to go and do everything in your power to get Obama elected then consider the chant that filled the hall after Palin spoke at the RNC, "Drill Drill Drill." I think of teeth when I think of drills. I think of rape. I think of destruction. I think of domination. I think of military exercises that force mindless repetition, emptying the brain of analysis, doubt, ambiguity or dissent. I think of pain.
Do we want a future of drilling? More holes in the ozone, in the floor of the sea, more holes in our thinking, in the trust between nations and peoples, more holes in the fabric of this precious thing we call life?
Eve Ensler
September 5, 2008
