Culture – Page 21 – Pat the Expat

Developments

Change is haunting our little corner of paradise. As long as there have been gringos moving to lakeside to get away from it all, each new wave has had two things in common: first, the old-timers predict the end of all that is good and wholesome here, and second, the newbies want to shut the door behind them and let no one else in.

As The Eagles once sang, “you call some place Paradise, kiss it goodbye.”

When you have a great, inexpensive place to live, with a wonderful climate and friendly people, near a major metropolitan area and an international airport, people will find you (Cue Hans Gruber). With the improving economies NOB, all those baby-boomers (10,000 a day) looking to retire, and Guadalajara continuing to grow in all directions, another growth wave is washing over lakeside.

I don’t get overly excited about it. Yes, there is a shadowy group of international investors looking to build some high rises up against the mountains. And a major consortium of Mexican companies wants to build a US-style retirement community on the underdeveloped east side of Chapala. New properties are up for sale and in development all over the area, and even my own condominio has started clearing lots in the second, larger portion of our development.

The infrastructure, especially the road network, is insufficient for even the existing population. And the local government–regardless of who is in charge–seems more interested in making some money from approving new development than in improving the infrastructure necessary to support it.

I still feel most of the opposition to development is a little reflexive. Most of these proposed projects don’t get built. Developers in Mexico have a tendency to promote first, in the hopes of generating enough interest to rezone/build/sell. So one often hears about a project, sees advertising and maybe even a ground-breaking, yet nothing comes of it.

This scar is going on five years old…two buildings completed

On the flip side, we have two new hospitals and a cardiac clinic underway, which is a vest improvement on the simple clinic and Cruz Roja ambulance upon which we previously relied. I agree that no one wants to turn our sleepy little town into another Puerto Vallarta, yet that is unlikely. While our weather is near perfect, the lake does not provide the same tourist draw as the ocean. There is a sizable mountain between us and Guadalajara, so we won’t be overrun by commuters until (1) the main road is greatly improved and (2) there is nowhere else closer to the city to develop. That gives us about 20 years of peace on that front.

Which is not to say there is no threat from development. We have a high-rise sneaking up on the lake shore in an otherwise quiet residential neighborhood, despite the zoning laws and the opposition of the residents. Scars appear on the mountainside from time-to-time. but the good comes with the bad.

New continuing care community…
think they’re marketing to gringos?

As more people arrive, especially more Mexicans and even more specifically Tapatios from Guadalajara, demand for infrastructure will grow, too. Its one thing to ignore a pueblo of 10,000 locals, or even a few thousand gringo retirees and snowbirds. But when folks with political connections start to retire to lakeside, things will change. As they always do.

Change is the only constant, as they say. Fifty years ago, Ajijic was a little Mexican pueblo connected by a dirt road to the wider world. Thirty years ago, expats lined up at the only phone in the public square to make long-distance calls home. Today, it’s still a quaint village, albeit with a WalMart and more traffic and good restaurants than it would have otherwise. It probably won’t be that forever, but nowhere is.

Sin gas

Go to a restaurant in Mexico and ask for a glass of water (agua) and you’ll be asked “sin gas?” or “without bubbles?” as in natural or carbonated water. The phrase sin gas also describes what happens when your local gasolinera has no gasolina.

We’re experiencing a blast from the past, a real live gas shortage here in Mexico. Wait a minute, you think, isn’t Mexico an oil exporter? Yes, and therein lies a long and torturous tale of incompetence, politics, corruption, markets, corruption, and more incompetence and corruption…but mostly the latter two.

While Mexico controls several oil-rich areas, they were mostly offshore. Oil production was a small enterprise generally engaged in by large foreign companies on an exploratory basis through the early twentieth century. After the Mexican revolution, the socialist government seized on a dispute between workers and foreign oil companies to expropriate the oil industry, lock, stock, and barrel (pun intended). The government set up a giant oil monopoly (easily the largest employer in Mexico for over a hundred years, and perennially one of the largest private companies in the world) called Pemex, for Petroléos Mexicanos. If you drilled for oil, sold gas, or bought either, you did it through Pemex.

Like all monopolies, but especially government ones (and most egregiously socialist government ones), Pemex became wealthy, fat, and lazy. It didn’t maintain equipment, it didn’t invest in new technology, it didn’t develop new fields. It did create a vast and unresponsive bureaucracy, it did create jobs-for-life-and-beyond, it did control the flow of fuel and use it for political purposes. But the very fact of Pemex, the fact oil and gas belonged to the Mexican people and not some foreign enterprise, was of considerable pride to Mexico. Much like conservative Americans consider the right to bear arms as intrinsic to the country (whether they plan an insurrection or not), the average Mexican put up with Pemex inefficiency because of what it stood for: national sovereignty.

During the last Presidential administration, the Pemex situation got so dire that President Peña Nieto forced through Congress a law gradually eliminating Pemex’s monopoly. New exploratory tracts were auctioned off (slowly) to foreign oil companies. New gas stations opened (slowly), and while they were forced to buy gas from Pemex initially, they will eventually use their own gas. Pemex signed joint development agreements to improve their refining and production technology. Many Mexicans opposed these moves, but were willing to try them to see if they worked.

Mexico’s new President, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (or AMLO) was one of those who opposed the new policies. He campaigned to repeal them, but after being elected and seeing his statements roiling the markets, he relented and simply suspended further progress as he re-evaluates them.

((Pat, are you ever going to explain why you have no gas?)) I told you it was long and torturous!

One other thing AMLO campaigned on was fighting corruption, and this was such a selling point it was the main reason he and his newly-created MORENA party had an overwhelming election victory. One of the biggest forms of corruption at Pemex was the theft of gas from the many pipelines which were (key verb tense, there) the main distribution system in Mexico. I’m not talking about pumping a little extra gas into a plastic jug and making a run for it from the pump. I’m talking pulling big-rig tankers up to pipeline junctions and stealing thousands of gallons. Estimates were that almost 20% of the gas distributed across the country was stolen. It was so lucrative everybody got involved: small-scale family businesses, government employees, and eventually the cartels, who are always on the lookout for new and illegal sources of income.

Candidate AMLO made bold promises of stopping corruption without explaining exactly how he was going to accomplish them. When confronted with the gas thefts, he came up with an innovative approach: he shut off the gas pipelines. No gas, no theft. And he decided to distribute gas using tanker trucks, as is done in those areas of Mexico that aren’t supplied via pipeline.

But deciding to do something like switching from one long-established distribution system to another is easier said-than-done. Whose trucks? What schedule? Where to go first? Who will provide security on the road? Perhaps all of these points were discussed, and maybe they were worked through. No one really knows, because the government didn’t announce the changes; suddenly, gas stations started closing, and then the government went public. In those rural regions where tanker trucks were the norm, gas is still flowing. But those areas are also less developed and have less demand; whether this new approach can ever work remains in question.

Some see politics at play, and suggest that areas that didn’t support the President have seen more severe shortages. As Hanlon’s razor holds, never ascribe to malice what can reasonably be explained by stupidity. The government insists there is no shortage, just some distribution difficulties, and they will be alleviated soon (read with authoritative government spokesman voice).

We’re entering the second week of our gas shutdown. Traffic is noticeably down here at lakeside, even though the high season of snowbird visitors is peaking. FaceBook is full of videos from Guadalajara with long lines outside gasolineras. It is something of a 70’s flashback for me. So you know whats coming…the greatest ht from the last (1979) gas crisis, a favorite of George W. Bush and yours truly:

To build a fire

Few things are as satisfying as a roaring fire on a cold night, perhaps with a fine snifter of brandy and some great company, to boot. Why is that?

After all, fire is pretty elementary and ordinary. Man’s conquest of fire is so ancient that we have no idea how or when it happened, although every society has a fire-mastery myth. And all fire does is provide light (not really that much) and heat (not very efficiently).

When we lived in northern climes, we had a wooded lot, full of pine, oak, and beech. Courtesy of Hurricane Isabel in 2003, we had a huge wall of logs which lapped the perimeter of our lot, and probably is still not entirely dissipated. The trees provided plenty of kindling, and we had a real, old-fashioned fireplace in the family room. Starting early in the fall, I would begin to gather and stack the wood closer to the house, and identify a great pile of kindling. Given the nearly unending supply of firewood, we had a fire most evenings. Later on, we had gas fireplaces, which look just fine and produce some heat, but just missed that “something.”

Fast forward to our life on Mexico, and I figured our nights of roaring fires were all behind us. We have a real fireplace (chimney but no flue), but it is gas-fed. Certainly it never gets cold enough to justify a fire. The last few weeks we have had overnight temperatures in the 40’s, but seriously, folks, that’s not fireplace weather.

Our fireplace looked odd with just a gas pipe sticking out. We looked at gas fireplace logs, but they were ugly, and crazy expensive (perhaps an import thing?) So after almost two years of staring at it, we finally decided to get a real firewood grate. We had a local ferretero (iron smith) come by and take down the measurements and design, and he delivered a custom one.

Since Mexicans like a good holiday fire as much as anyone–and they consider 50 degrees to be essentially freezing–this is the season for road-side stands selling all kinds of firewood. Now we are back in the business of roaring fires, if only for a few weeks.

Despite the past experience, I have no special skill when it comes to starting a fire. And I’m not opposed to twisting the gas handle if the fire is slow to take. After all, I’m not in fear of freezing to death, like the protagonist of Jack London’s great short story (go ahead, go read it now), from whom I borrowed the title of this post. I just know what I like: the crackle and the hiss, the warm glow, the wisp of aromatic wood.

Now with snap, crackle & pop?

CDMX Impressions

Obviously, we enjoyed our week-long visit to Mexico City. There is so much to do there, we look forward to heading back for at least another week. Here are some summary impressions:

Symbol of Mexico, city, state, and nation

Christmas is a great time to visit, as the exodus of Chilangos to visit family elsewhere combined with the extended holiday to reduce traffic and crowds. We noticed regular people were uniformly friendly; more experienced visitors tell us that varies with the time of year and the size of the crowds. On the downside, smog is more likely in the winter, and no doubt you noticed the haze in any of my panoramic pictures!

The most glaring fact about Mexico City is its sheer size. You drive from the city center for a half hour in any direction and you pass one cluster of skyscrapers after another; you change direction and it’s more of the same. The only thing masking its size is the number of hills, but as you pass them, you notice how urban sprawl is gradually colonizing even the steepest slopes. Traffic can still confound. Despite the sprawl, there are good bus and subway systems, Uber is incredibly cheap, and even the taxis are reasonable. I finally broke the code on the taxi service: private taxis are unmarked cars which may be cheaper, but could be perilous. The city taxis, labelled with “CDMX taxi” are very solid and economical.

Plenty of space
Guess the cliffs were too steep

Architecture is all over the map. The occasional original Meso-american site, Spanish colonial, French (from Maximillian I’s brief reign), post-modern, you name it. The main Cathedral took 300 years to complete, so its a mixture of neo-Gothic, Romanesque and Baroque, for example. And oftentimes things sit at weird angles, due to a combination of lake-bed footings and earthquakes.

So much history and public art that it takes a longer, more leisurely visit to digest. Likewise for museums and galleries. There are statues and monuments and plaques everywhere, and whenever they dig, they uncover more.

UNAM library: no Touchdown Jesus, but still
Site of ballet folklorico
Olympic stadium
Monument to the revolution, in reflection

Mexico City has become a culinary destination with several of the world’s top restaurants. Our schedule (and the need for reservations far in advance) didn’t allow us to visit them, but there are thousands of good restaurants. I would suggest that any visit include a stop at two (gasp!) local chains: La Casa de Toño and El Moro Churrería. The first is a Chilango tradition, and when we went the lines of locals were long, but seating was fast. It serves Mexican comfort food, cheap and very quick. The second serves churros, fried dough in a long strand, much like a doughnut shaped as a stick. With dipping sauces. And ice cream and hot chocolate and milk shakes. Again, long lines, quick service, incredibly delicious.

Ground beef as the plate
(L-R) flautas, pozole, quesadilla
Pozole & Sopa Azteca
Tacos & flautas

Which brings me to the subject of quesadillas, and superiority. Now even if you know only a little Spanish, you know a quesadilla is a grilled, cheese-filled bite of tortilla heaven. Everywhere, except Mexico City. There, they ask whether you want queso (cheese) in your quesadilla. They explain there are many things you could put in a quesadilla, so they don’t assume you want queso. Except this is true everywhere else, but when you order a quesadilla anywhere else, they know you want queso! When we pointed this little discrepancy out to our chilanga guide, she brushed it off as a provincial lack of understanding of the city’s cosmopolitan style. Every once in a while, she would provide an off-hand comment about how Guadalajara (or wherever) didn’t really understand the politics, or the cuisine, or the art of México (the city). It was good-natured, but very reminiscent of the way New Yorkers think and talk.

Street vendors left their goods out overnight

We never felt unsafe or at any risk. Our hotel was adjacent to the US embassy, so there was a constant security presence in the neighborhood. Yet we were also across the street from the Zone Rosa, or pink zone, an area full of free-wheeling bars, clubs, and night life with an anything goes attitude. As gray-haired gringos, we wandered through it to go to a restaurant and didn’t garner any attention.

While mom was marketing stuff, these little guys were alongside a busy, fast-moving highway

Probably the biggest negative aspect of our visit was the poverty. Nearly every block has a beggar or two, but they are in no way aggressive, just persistent. We oftentimes saw whole families on the street, selling trinkets or candy, and they were in the same place all day (and probably all night). It is a sad fact of life here, and many folks carry some small change and drop a coin here and there. We had one episode at El Moro, when the family sitting next to us (obviously not dressed as living on the street), eating churros as we were, then sent their small child around with a cup looking for change! She moved away from most of the others quickly enough, but stayed at our end of the table, saying please and holding out a cup with one hand as she ate a churro with the other. Even after we said “lo siento” (sorry), she continued. One tip: after the third “lo siento” I wagged my finger back and forth, which is a strong signal in Mexico for “enough”, and she moved on.

Costs for Mexico City were on a par with Guadalajara and well above our small town, but most everything was still a bargain compared to US rates, especially big-city US rates. While English is not ubiquitous, many people have at least a few words, and are willing to help you even if they don’t. Probably my strongest impression was one of a friendly city with much to offer, and not much in the way of drawbacks. Highly recommend it even for a short visit!

On the Streets

Of course, we have had several opportunities to take to the streets during this trip to Mexico City.

Street crowds &
Vendors

We toured the Zócalo, the great main square of first Tenochtitlan and now CDMX. Since we are in the Chrstmas season, the crowds were still large on a Thursday morning and afternoon.

When walking round the city, it is easy to get a sense of vertigo, as there always seems to be a large building, usually a church, leaning at an odd angle. No matter how many times I saw one, it still challenged my balance, and walking in them was even worse.

Not exaggerated!
sinking forward
what’s with that tower
is it just me?

In the cathedral at the Zócalo, the leaning got so bad they installed a pendulum to measure it. By injecting cement, they have gradually moved it back toward level, but its not there yet.

Pendulum measures lean
injects cement under the floor

A quintessential chilango (nickname for CDMX natives) thing to do is to ride the boats in Xochimilco, a canal among some of the remaining man-made islands from the original lake Texcoco. It is highly touristic, but still fun, even when there are more boats than waterway in the canal.

Pole power
a rare tranquil moment

Our flotilla was boarded by a group of Pirate Mariachis

We didn’t attend a bullfight, but we did visit the bullfighting ring, said to be the world’s largest.

Famous Mexican matador
Look, no guardrail!

We saw these guys all dressed up near the Plaza Mayor. While it’s all fun and games now, there are reminders of how things used to be.

Anybody want a picture?
All we wanted was a selfie!

Two more posts coming, one on our last day in CDMX and another with some general impressions!

The other side

We visited Chapultepec castle the other day, and it was very interesting for a number of reasons. First, it has a dominating, 360 degree view of Mexico City. Second, it was the sight of an ancient retreat for Aztec nobility. Third, it was the seat of government for Mexico, both under the short-lived Latin empire of Maximillian I and then the 19th century Mexican Presidents which followed him. But mostly because it was the site of the last battle of the Mexican-American War. Or the American invasion, as it is known down here.

Views of
modern Mexico City
from Chapultepec

Most US historians now agree with Mexico’s view of the conflict, buttressed by ample evidence from those involved. Ulysses S Grant, who fought in the war as a lieutenant, said “I was bitterly opposed…and to this day, regard the war…as one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation.” Then congressman Abraham Lincoln thought the war was immoral, intended to further the spread of slavery, and threatened our Republican values. Former President and congressman John Quincy Adams called it “a most unrighteous war.”

The haunting monument to the Niños Heroes atop Chapultepec Castle

On September 13th, 1847, a combined force of US Army and Marines stormed the defenders of the castle, which included several cadets from a Mexican military academy there. The American victory sealed the fate of the Mexican government, gave the US Marine Corps the first line of its anthem (“From the halls of Montezuma”), and established the Mexican legend of the Niños Heroes or Child-Heroes.

Six teenage cadets refused the order to retreat from the buildings atop the summit, and instead continued to fight. Plaques memorialize where they died; one took the Mexican flag before it could be seized and jumped over the cliff literally with the flag as his shroud. Mexico does not make a big deal about the US invasion, but the story of the Niños Heroes is learned by all children in school.

Painted inside the dome (notice the US flag, bottom center)

It is a little strange being in a museum and seeing the US military playing the role of the heavy. Even stranger is seeing captured US battle streamers as prizes of battle.

So much of the US-Mexico relationship goes back to this war. The historical consensus is President Polk, a southerner, wanted more territory where slavery could spread, ensuring a majority of slave states in the US Senate. Polk sent the US Army into disputed territory in Texas, and US Grant’s memoirs confirm the Army was directed to act provocatively to elicit a Mexican attack.

As a result of the war, Mexico lost almost half its territory, including California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Texas, and parts of New Mexico and Colorado. Try to think of the United States without these lands! The US became a Pacific power, and a generation of military officers honed the skills which they would employ against each other in nearly every major battle of the US Civil War. After this aggression, Mexico did not trust the United States again for over 100 years. The Mexican view was aptly summed up by Porfirio Díaz, the Mexican President and later dictator, who said “Poor Mexico, so far from God, and so close to the United States.” It is nothing short of amazing the relationship has improved as much as it has, given how our mutual histories turned on the event.

Sights & sounds of la Navidad

Merry Christmas from the middle of Avenida Paseo de la Refroma, which is ironic for reasons below

Church and State are legally separated in Mexico. When that happened during the Reforma period after the revolution, it resulted in repression of the Church and the resulting Cristero war. In the end, the government seized all Church property. Which means that in a land where Church and State are legally separated, the government owns and maintains all Church properties! And Christmas shows up all over the place, from official squares to nativity scenes to toll booths (festooned with garland and “Feliz Navidad” written on the windows).

The Zócalo during the late afternoon, Christmas eve

The Zócalo after Christmas eve mass at the Cathedral

Christmas tree next to the monument to the Mexican Revolution

Feliz Navidad remains a common greeting, although a few “feliz fiestas” or “happy holidays” have crept into Méxican culture. Since “feliz fiestas” sounds so weird (are there any unhappy fiestas?) it may not catch on.

Mexico has a tortured history of religious involvement in political affairs. For a long time, all citizens had to be Catholic. The call for independence came under a banner of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Still, México seems to have come to terms with a way to be officially secular without renouncing the essence of religious belief, which is after all communal and “other” facing.

The Cardinal Archbishop of Mexico City presiding at the Christmas eve vigil mass

¡Feliz Navidad a todos!

Big things in tiny spaces

Aztec temple, Spanish church, Apartment building

Winston Churchill once commented that the Balkans were so violent because they “produce more history than they consume.” CDMX produces a lot of history, too, and sometimes it is very concentrated. We visited two of its most densely packed historical sites today: Three Cultures Square and Tepeyac.

I expected the visit to Three Cultures Square to be a simple photo op: yes, you can grab an image with pre-modern (Aztec), modern (Spanish colonial) and post-modern (1960’s) structures in it. But as we toured the site, I came to realize just how much history was jam-packed into it.

First, it was the site of the Aztec town of Tlatelolco, where Moctezuma appeared before his people begging them not to attack the conquistadores. Instead, the Aztecs turned on Moctezuma and stoned him, resulting in his eventual death. There also the final Aztec chief, Cuauhtémoc fought and lost the final battle against Cortés, resulting in the end of the Aztec empire.

When the Spanish built this church there, it was the site of the baptism of a indigenous man who took the Christian name Juan Diego…more on him later.

Church of Santiago
Juan Diego’s baptismal fount

In 1968, students and workers protested against the corruption evident in the run-up to the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. Military and police opened fire on them in this same square, killing between 300-400 on the eve of the opening ceremonies.

Finally, the apartment blocs lining the square collapsed during the 1985 earthquake, again killing hundreds in the neighborhood.

Quite a lot of history in a space a little larger than a soccer pitch. Its like the Boston Tea Party, Gettysburg, and Kent State all happened on the same spot.

Later in the morning we went to Tepeyac, better known as the hill on which the Virgin Mary (our Lady of Guadalupe) appeared to Juan Diego (yes, that Juan Diego), which I covered here. Now we’ve been to Rome, Jerusalem, Lourdes, and Fatima, and we have never seen a denser pack of churches than around the grounds of the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

yes, its sinking
The new & old basilicas
The Indians’ Church
The Church of the well
A Chapel just to “swear off” something
The original church on the hill

One cannot overstate the Mexican people’s deep devotion to this Marian apparition. As our tour guide put it, not all Mexicans are Catholic (80% are), but all Mexicans are Guadalupanos (or devotees of Our Lady). Any time of day or night, you’ll find common folk working their way across the central plaza of the Basilica…on their knees. During the days immediately before the annual feast of La Guadalupana (12 December), almost 11 million people visited the shrine, again in a space about the size of your average mall in the States.

I counted seven different churches, including the original chapel directed to be built by Our Lady, and the second, larger church which is sinking into that soft lake bed which underlies most of CDMX. Mexican families come for the day: there is always a Mass underway, there were long lines for confessions, and people celebrating marriages, good fortunes, or just giving thanks.

Look closely & you can see the cracks
Church of the well is…
moving away

One can always visit the famous tilma, the cloak on which the image of the Virgin appeared, by standing on a series of motorized walkways that take you slowly past; there is always a short line. The tilma is out of reach, as it has already survived an acid attack and 29 sticks of dynamite!

The tilma
A candle stand after 29 sticks of dynamite
Close up

The grounds of the Basilica are not large, but they are full of churches, chapels, images to place votive candles, and a few tastefully obscured shops. Of course, just outside the grounds are all the plastic religious gee-gaws one could want. Looking at the various sculptures and watching Mexican families enjoy their visits, you can see just how much this particular icon means to all of them.

Juan Diego, in roman garb…doesn’t he look classical?
Another Juan Diego, with tilma
A pictorial representation of the peoples and their Mother

Another big thing in a very small space.

Buen Fin: this won’t End Well

One thing I do not miss during this time of year is: Black Friday. Now I don’t mean to upset those of you who religiously get up in the wee ours of the morning after Thanksgiving to enjoy yourself by fighting through a crowd of the similarly-motivated set upon buying things at insanely reduced prices. Everybody needs a hobby, and if shopping is yours, Black Friday is your Super Bowl.

To me, Black Friday always seemed like the last straw: a bacchanalia of unnecessary shopping and outrageous behavior fueled by advertising specifically designed to manipulate. So when we moved to Mexico, where they don’t even celebrate Thanksgiving, I assumed I would only see Black Friday from a distance, on my TV or computer screen.

I was wrong. Back in 2011, major Mexican retailers worked with the federal government (under Presidente Felipe Calderón) to establish a holiday devoted to: merchandise! They called it “Buen Fin” or literally “Good End”, a contraction of the common greeting “buen fin de semana” or “happy weekend.” They selected the third weekend in November, which precedes the annual celebration of the Mexican revolution, exploiting the long weekend as an opportunity for consumer spending. The government (and big business) saw it as way to stimulate the economy, and even moved forward the payment of Christmas bonuses to ensure workers had pesos to spend.

Buen Fin was this past weekend. The advertising is much less hyped than in the States, and the deals are much less extreme: more like Presidents’ day sales than Black Friday as we have come to know it. The consumer culture in Mexico is also less advanced. Credit is still a relatively new thing, and average Mexicans rarely purchase things they just “have to have” as opposed to need.

But you can see where Buen Fin is headed. It seems to grow year-by-year. The government consumer protection agency is now monitoring for scams associated with the holiday. Academic studies indicate Mexicans are increasingly using credit during Buen Fin and making only minimum monthly payments. I dread when Mexican retailers master the art of the extreme sales promotions with limited numbers of sale items available: orderly queuing is not exactly a Mexican national characteristic!

Lest you think Buen Fin just represents the spread of American consumer culture to its near southern neighbor, I think it is a far more universal trend. Have you ever heard of Singles Day? In China, the rise of consumerism and decline in marriages led to an unofficial holiday on November 11th. The combination of four “singles” on that date (11/11) was deemed auspicious by the many single Chinese men who could not find wives, so they began (as a joke, back in the 90’s) celebrating parties on that date. Once China’s economy took off, businesses seized on the holiday which is now the largest online/offline shopping day in the world, dwarfing both Black Friday and Cyber Monday. And Singles Day is now spreading around Asia.

Singles Day has run into resistance in Europe, as the date coincides with Remembrance Day, honoring the dead of World War I and still a solemn occasion. But I wouldn’t bet against it in the long run. In the States, November 11th is also Veterans’ Day, an extension of the original US Remembrance Day. That didn’t stop stores in the States, who simply added flags to their ads and special discounts for service members and–voila–another chance to make money!

So if you want to avoid consumerism, you might need to find another planet, not another country. I wonder when the first big box store opens on the Moon?

Early Thanksgiving

A few weeks back I covered our celebration of Canadian Thanksgiving. In our family, we also celebrate Early Thanksgiving. It started several years ago when we were trying to determine how to get our two daughters, their husbands and kids all together to celebrate Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving was always the big family celebration for us. Birthdays were quiet affairs, Christmas is mostly a religious holiday with some small gifts exchanged on the Eve, but Thanksgiving was “all hands on deck.” Everybody was expected to attend. Everybody got to select one side dish and one dessert; this resulted in a surfeit of food, but great leftovers. Turkey was of course the main event. Judy took care of all the cooking, I did all the cleaning. Everybody ate once together around 3:00 in the afternoon, then watched football and noshed the rest of the day.

But traveling over the Thanksgiving weekend is such a hassle, and the weather can be treacherous. Stores or theaters and the like are crowded, and somebody has to host. Thanksgiving was more pressure-packed than festive. Then one year by circumstance we knew we could not gather that weekend, so we decided to get together the weekend of Veteran’s Day. It was a simple change with profound effects.

Need a rental place to gather? Plenty available that weekend. Airfares are reasonable, and there are no crazy crowds. Two weeks earlier in the season generally means better weather. Those who work can get time off because no one else is asking for it. We’ve done it thrice now with great results. Yes, there are some challenges. This year we couldn’t find a fresh turkey, since they weren’t being stocked two weeks early. The football offerings on Thursday and Friday were more limited. Otherwise, it was great time. And our movable feast frees up the kids to visit their in-laws for the regular one.

What’s with the trees? Honey, we’re not in Jalisco anymore!

We got a small taste of fall during our visit to Deep Creek Lake, Maryland. By Friday the forecasted rain had turned to a light frost as the temps hovered in the thirties and a steady wind blew in. We still managed to do some hiking. Gramps (yo) got in several rounds of pillow fights, ping pong, and jumping monster with the grandkids. The latter is a peculiar game which involves Gramps covering himself with blankets, making monster noises, and engaging in world-wrestling style combat with the grandkids armed with pillows. It mostly devolves into my being beaten senseless while laughing hysterically.

Ian, Quinn, & Henry playing pool. Have to start them early.

A great time was had by all. If you go through the usual harangue of family holiday gatherings, consider moving the celebration. The most important aspect of such an event is to get together, and that’s the part that is the easiest, when you’re not part of the crowd.