Christmas

Me,my aunt vito,the CEO and my cousin Carol who also works at Ecuasanitas

To start off the Christmas festivities my aunt Vito took me to her company Christmas party. It was like a wedding party. Everyone went formal, there were escorts at the door, beautiful flower arrangements, and we were seated in tables of 10. There was 5 course meal and unlimited wine and whiskey at each table.  That said I had a great time. There were about 400 employees and everyone was dancing the night away with a live band and then dj. 

Christmas is my aunt’s favorite holiday and she really goes all out with her decorations every year she buys new ordiments and changes theme for her Christmas tree.

She is also known for having a “Christmas village” most of which she brings from the US because it is ridiculously expensive in Ecuador. Every year her village grows more and more, that during Christmas she needs to storage some of her living room furniture to make room.

My aunt hosted Christmas Eve but since she invited 40 family members she rented out a small salon next door.  My aunt hired two maintenance people from her company to help us clean up and set up the salon. My cousin and I were in charge of getting a pine tree and decorating it and a small nativity scene for the salon. My aunt hired two people to serve on Christmas Eve.   The invitation was at 10pm because that was the time mass started down the street.  Everyone at church brought their baby Jesus. It’s an Ecuadorian tradition where the baby Jesus is kept away until Christmas Eve’s mass.  Once mass has ended people throw rose petals at the people carrying the baby Jesus.  Then off we went to the salon and we toasted, ate then gave out the gifts and ate the traditional Christmas dessert, pestiño, it consists of flour, fried in olive oil and passed through honey.
The dancing began shortly after.  Little by little family members went home. There is a section of the family that are professional partiers and drinkers and they started up the whisky and the dancing and they didn’t stop. They did nap for like 15 mins at a time and would wake up to continue the party but they never got horrible drunk it was a site to see. We ended up staying up until 6:20am the next morning.  We opened the door to go out and we saw light. We all sleep for 4 hours and got back up because we had a Christmas BBQ at my uncles house.