One of the things I love about Mexico is the fiestas. Boy, do they like to party. Now, before you conjure up images of workplace Christmas parties, fiestas are a family affair.
Let’s take for example a birthday party. All of your family is invited, adults and children alike. If you are specifically invited, it is considered an insult if you no-show. Be prepared to either have a REALLY good excuse why you can’t go, or you will hurt their feelings. So for our friends’ daughter’s 2nd birthday, our whole family and all their friends’ families are invited. No more small gatherings of a handful of children. How extravagant the party is depends on your economic status. This friend of ours is fairly affluent, so the party was pretty extravagant.
When you arrive, you are warmly greeted by everyone there, but especially the host. They help you find a table (yes, it is almost like going to a restaurant), get refreshments for you and serve food to you (either themselves or one of their servers). Usually they visit for a few minutes and move on to visit with others. How often they are back to visit depends on how busy they are and how many friends they need to visit. Typically, we have similar friend circles so we usually sit at a table with other friends we already know. For the adults, that’s pretty much the extent of the day/evening. We chat and visit for hours. That may sound boring, but Mexicans generally have mastered the art of conversation. Even Bill enjoys sitting and visiting with friends at these fiestas.
For the children, the parties are similar to what you would find in Canada or the US, though the theme party is not quite as big here – or so it would seem. Don’t get me wrong – this little girl loves ‘Tinkerbell’ so she was wearing a ‘Tinkerbell’ costume and had a few balloons, but we weren’t inundated with Tinkerbell. Sometimes there are swim parties – this party wasn’t particularly a swim party, but the boys could go swimming as our friend owns the pool and facility.
At this party, they hired a party group that provided entertainment for the children with games, music and piñatas (yes, plural - they do 2).
The parents could just relax and visit while the children were occupied. Of course, my kids were a little shy about playing the games as they weren’t entirely sure what they were doing. They played a different version of musical chairs – except they used hats in the middle. They played some games with some of the adults and the entertainment part of the party was over.
Two large cakes were cut and distributed. The cakes (pastels) here are different, though I can’t quite describe how. Sweeter for sure, almost more pudding cake than what we are used to. The boys like it but Bill and I aren’t big fans (just as well for my waistline!) Then the kids play and the adult continue to visit. Most of the parties I’ve been to start at about 2 or 3 in the afternoon and end in the evening – around 5 or 6pm. At least kids parties are that way.
We have been invited to about 1-2 parties per month – either for birthdays, town fiestas, or one quince años (I’ll explain about that in another blog). It is a lot of fun and our boys are starting to expect them.
They’ve already started planning theirs. Swimming is a must according to them.
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