Photos

In Mexico, Christmas is not the brief flirtation with the nativity that it is in Anglo America.

With a holiday season that can last from December 16 to as late as February 2, the Mexican Feliz Navidad dwarfs the familiar Anglo Merry Christmas. (You can find detailed descriptions of the celebrations on numerous web pages, like this one).

While we were visiting Merida, Mexico in December of last year, the Christmas spirit manifested itself in many different ways. Some could not be photographed: the warmth of the greetings you received from people you knew, and the apparently equal warmth in the greetings of strangers in the street. Others were a little easier to capture with a camera, though the light bulb in the construction pictured here didn't make it the easiest subject.

This ornament was part of a larger shrine that glowed into the dark night on a small side street. It was December 30th when my girlfriend and I found it, but no one had turned it off, much less taken it down. And there was no one around to see it but us. Undeterred, it shed its light on its small corner of the world, lending cheeriness to an otherwise deserted and somewhat run-down street.

(A blurry shot of my girlfriend snapping photos at the scene itself is posted in the workshop. It's not a good photo, but it gives you context for this shot in a way my description can't.)