Christmas started in my aunt's kitchen. She baked cakes and made tamales and montucas, fresh sweet corn steamed in dried banana husk, tender and sweet like a corn cake that isn't dry. The corn for montucas is raw, not cooked like it is for tamales, so I helped grind it at the molino, and the corn milk splashed all over me. She made atol from the corn too.
A pig was killed for the holidays. Most of the meat was sold to the neighbors, and one good leg was kept for us. She made morcilla and dry carne asada that hung in the little back room. The leg was baked until it was crusty and crunchy outside and juicy inside, with an almost mustardy taste.
In the morning she fried chicharrones fresh. She would lift one off the pan with a fork, pass it to a fresh white corn tortilla, and hand it to me. The fatty bits with the tender tortilla were the best taste ever.
My uncle would cut the top off a tall pine, taller than our house on stilts, and set it on the dining room table. We decorated it with colorful blinking lights, the old-school kind, and a shiny star on top.
At night a friend and I ran around with sparklers, leaving trails of magic behind us while fireworks and celebratory gunshots went off in the distance.
I didn't get presents or stockings. I only knew Santa from a small 13-inch black-and-white TV, and I never thought I was missing anything.
