Hi all!
We celebrate Christmas two days also, 24th (Christmas eve) and 25th(Christmas day).
On the 24th its almost as an average day, because everyone who has a job works (well maybe not school teachers because kids are on vacation- our school time goes from march to the first week of december) until 7pm when people head to their houses and all the family gathers at one house.
Because its the only opportunity almost the whole family is together, Christmas eve dinner it's very important so mothers and grandmother do spend quite some time in the kitchen to cook a great feast
. The typical food on Christmas and New Year's eve is turkey with Paneton (a sweet bread with reasins and little fruits - it's suppose to be an italian bread)
![[Linked Image]](http://www.apuntesdecocina.com/media/panettone_small.jpg)
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In fact around 5-6pm you can smell turkey everywhere because some families instead of cooking the turkey on their own oven they take it to the nearest bakery to be cooked, so you walked by a bakery and there's the smell of turkey.
As I said family gathers together around 7 or 8pm until twelve pm when everyone wishes the other Happy Christmas and hugs and you can hear/see the fireworks ignited (sp?) by some families (my family still does, my grandmother -we gather at her house- has a garden at her front door where my uncles, cousings, me and my brother ignite the fireworks). It's like a known competition among the other houses, who makes more noise to celebrate Christams
, although in the past years less people are doing it. (This firework tradition is more of a city thing, in the other parts of Peru, the fireworks are ignited by the authorities so if someone wants can go to a dtermined palce to watch them).
After fireworks, kids receive their gifts brought by PapaNoel=Santa Clause. I learnt a couple of years ago that we not always 'believed' in Santa, my mom told me something of 30 years ago Santa was brought here by Coca Cola :rolleyes: .
Then we have dinner and kids (myself included when I still received toys- wow it's been like 7 years ago, feels like yesterday
) eat as fast as one can so they can go play with they're new toys until 2am when they get sleepy and adult stay until around 4am.
On the 25th, we have breakfast together with some more turkey and the rest of the day is spend visiting other relatives.
Carolyn
