Mexico: Party Time

Mexico is the land of fiestas. What this word means exactly is celebration but also to indicate a party or holiday. Mexicans will have a party or celebration for any or no reason at all.

I asked my wife, who had just finished a feature article on Mexican fiestas, exactly how many fiestas Mexico has. Her response: "Only God knows."

When I tried looking into this, I found she was right. There are so many fiestas that I found it difficult to get any accurate list of all of them.

Here's the deal: Although there is an official list of national fiestas, each little town, and even the neighborhoods in those little towns, have traditional fiestas that they celebrate. Sometimes they make up new ones as they go along! You never know and you cannot possible keep track of all of them. It is dizzying to say the least.

Try going to www.google.com and type in "Mexican fiestas" and then get ready for your eyes to bug out of your head. I got 67,800 hits for this search term. Yahoo will give you 134,000 hits. How do they do it? How do they find the time to celebrate them all and just who keeps track of all of them—apparently, someone does!

For an example, here is what is on San Miguel de Allende's calendar of fiestas:

January – Six holidays

February – Five holidays with one of them lasting 3 days.

March – Seven holidays

April – Nine holidays with two of them lasting 5 to 6 days.

May – Eleven holidays!

June – Nine holidays with one of them lasting 2 days.

July – Five holidays with two of them lasting 5 to 7 days.

August – A slow month with only two but one lasts 15 days!

September – Eight holidays

October – Six holidays

November – Four holidays

December – Four holidays with the Posada lasting 7 days

The mother of all fiestas occurs in our town of Guanajuato during October. It is the Festival Internacional Cervantino. This is an international celebration of the arts (some locals call it the celebration of the booze!) which lasts a whopping three (count them!) weeks! Can you imagine partying for an entire 21 days?

What I want to know is how does anyone find the time to do anything else but attend these fiestas?

What makes my head spin is that this isn't all the fiestas. Each little town and even barrio (neighborhood) can and does have its own unique fiestas which it also celebrates with all the trimmings. You can walk through a particular neighborhood and see people setting up colorful flags and banners, tables for loads of food, and hauling in whatever they will need for the night's festivities. Once you hear the fireworks going off then you know the party has begun.

The Spanish government, sometime in the 18th century, alleged that San Miguel de Allende was having "too many" fiestas. Now, what they meant by that is anyone's guess and how it was suppose to be affecting the city badly I simply do not know. Nevertheless, in usual Mexican fashion (the Spaniards should have seen this as a sign of things to come), a protest was organized and lodged, and the Spaniards repealed the allegation. The point is that Mexicans love their fiestas and no one had better mess with them!

One of the most mysterious fiestas of which most gringos know little is The Day of the Dead. This is celebrated November 1 & 2 and is not a morbid remembrance but rather a festive celebration. It is pre-Spanish and has roots all the way back to the Aztecs.

I've been to some of these fiestas and all I can say, in agreement with the words of George Carlin, American comedian,

"One tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor."

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