I... Won’t Be Home for Christmas

The Santa Fe Plaza at Christmas Time

This year, I’m not going home for Christmas. 

I’m missing the decorating of the Christmas tree; the curling up on a couch with my sibs sipping Mexican Hot Chocolate and cracking jokes; going to people’s houses, local restaurants, and community organizations for Las Posadas; having snowball fights, creating snowmen, and making snow angels; going to my favorite family's house for our yearly gift exchange and dinner; breaking open a piñata with mis primos; caroling on Canyon Road on Christmas Eve surrounded by lively folks, luminaries, and farolitos; and of course, eating copious amounts of food while playing games like King Elephant with my cousins for days on end.

Sigh.

This year, I’m staying in the East and I’ve got to admit, I imagined being overwhelmed by extreme agony and sadness at not being able to go home for Christmas. I mean, Christmas is my favorite Holiday and I can easily give three reasons why (though I promise there are at least 100 more):

1)    I remind my siblings of Buddy the Elf.

2)    When I was little, I used to want to grow up and be one of Santa’s Little Helpers. I'm being completely serious here by the way. 

3)    Then of course there’s the glorious incident of when my siblings found out that I didn’t believe in Santa Clause. Jajaja. The winter break of my first year in college, my family and I went to eat dinner at Hunan’s Chinese Restaurant in Santa Fe. While eating our sesame chicken and beef with broccoli, the question of how old we were when we stopped believing in Santa Clause arose. Looking up hesitantly and noticing my 12-year-old sister is not shocked by this revelation, I announce that I knew for sure when I was 9 and got a letter returned from Santa Clause. As I’m saying this, my 12-year-old sister looks at me completely flabbergasted and says she found a few years ago. I’m a little surprised at this point and say “Really? I’ve been pretending he’s real for you since Chicago?” She responds with something along the lines of: “Camila, Marissa and I knew, we just didn’t want to disappoint you. Antonio and I have been pretending ever sense then because we thought you still believed in him. We just thought… “we gotta keep the Holiday Spirit alive for Camila!’” Aw, what love.

Anyhow, this Christmas I’m going to be venturing to Poughkeepsie, New York to spend some time with my aunt, cousin, and pseudo nephew. I’m uber ecstatic because I get to be with my family, spend time with people who appreciate the spirit of Christmas, be a Holiday surprise for my pseudo nephew, and eat delicious food. Yippee!

Until then, I’m going to be reminiscing about Christmas, the Holiday Season, and and all the things that make me completely ecstatic in life because I'm in love with this time of year. 

Papier-mâché Noses and Why YOU Should Wear Sunscreen

The Real Pinocchio (Source)

I’m in love with Pinocchio. There. I’ve said it. I think he’s an obnoxious little shit, kind of like Clifford from that Martin Short movie of the same name. My siblings and I would watch “Clifford” and go into hysterics whenever he entered the scene, whacking people upside the heads as he walked down the airplane aisles. Sorry, slight tangent there, but they remind me of each other, and they’ve both got ridiculous names.  I would be willing to place a bet that Rumplestiltskin was like those two when he was a boy. 

Now, I’ve gotta say, I’m not a fan of Disney’s Pinocchio. He’s too sweet. He’s annoying in the sense where I can’t help but think “Oh my gosh, you’re so naïve and stupid.” Pinocchio from the Italian story, on the other hand, is a completely different lad. He’s annoying in a “You know exactly what you’re doing you conniving, smarmy, little puppet” sort of way. It’s not only Pinocchio as a character that I love though; it’s the whole freaking book. Back in the last couple years of high school, my siblings and I would read a few pages a couple of nights a week. We each had several characters we would do the voices for and it wove its way into our routine. It became a part of our sibling history and provoked our peculiar sense of humor. I still think it’s utterly hysterical. I mean, did you know that the reason Pinocchio escapes from Monstro’s junk-filled belly is because he’s asthmatic and wheezed the little sucker out? Or that Pinocchio threw a shoe at the character dear old Jiminy is based on (okay, that’s not funny, that’s just cruel). Or another scene is when Pinocchio goes to the Blue Fairy’s house and a lovely snail answers his door-knocking by calling out from the third floor that he’ll be down in a jiffy… which for the snail takes about three hours. My favorite episode though, and the one that most accurately expresses the dark-humor of the tale, is when Pinocchio’s walking along and runs into a snake. He completely wigs out, trips, and ends up with his head and torso literally stuck in a puddle of mud with his wooden legs kicking in the air. The snake, just like my sibs and me, starts cracking up at this ludicrous scene, bursts a blood vessel, and dies. Fortunately, my laughter did not cause such a life-degrading medical dilemma. Rather, every time Pinocchio pops up, my heart chuckles a little. That’s why I’ve decided to be Pinocchio for Halloween, because it amuses me to no end.

I’ve already got the knee-length pants and shiny shoes. Now I just need to get me a blouse, a sweet hat with a feather… and a nose. How can one possibly be Pinocchio without the infamous nose? So, somehow, in the next couple of weeks,  I’ve got it in my mind that I’ll need to mix together some flour and water to make myself a papier-mâché nose to wear in all it’s glory on the 31^st. The question is, once I have it, how the hell do I attach it to my face?

My great grandfather had a fake nose once and I’ve got to question that too. How did he attach his nose to his face? (FYI, he had skin cancer from being out in the sun too long without protection. Ladies and Gentlemen, please remember to wear sunscreen). My mom’s got this great story about a vacation she took with him and the rest of her family where they stayed at some castle in Athol (hehe… pretend you’ve got a lisp), Scotland.  It sounds awesome, right? However, there was only one restroom on the floor they were staying on. One night my great grandfather gets up from the dream world to go to the bathroom but someone’s in there. He waits awhile and eventually a lady walks out. Being the civil, gentlemanly Texan he was, he greeted her:

“Hello Madam.”

Talk about the end of civility. The lady started screaming and running down the hall back towards her room. Turns out he had his nose on crooked, his white hair was styled Albert Einstein-esque from just hopping out of bed, and his coke-bottle glasses were magnifying his eyes. I can imagine that his appearance could be a little startling, especially if you’re half asleep. Thus, I’m going to have to figure out this whole fake nose thing so I can pull it off. I’m thinking this whole Halloween idea only really amuses me though.

What are you going to be for Halloween this year?