Christmas in Southern Spain

I have always had some ambivalent feelings about Christmas. I love imaginary games, but giving credit for my work to someone living in the North Pole? And such a lot of work; all those foods, and music, and decorations and presents,  just  to evoke the same old feelings of warmth and togetherness, of anticipation and delight, and… pretty soon I am feeling rather sentimental myself, but no, I am resolute; this is my chance, in a new country to do new things. I began warning Matt and the girls last spring that I was not going to try to recreate the Christmases they were so familiar with back in the States.  

But when I was in Concord, putting things away in storage at the end of the summer, I lingered over the Christmas items. “The poor girls,” I thought, “already deprived of their house, and family and old friends. The stockings would be such a comfort. And maybe just a few of my favorite Christmas decorations and CDs…”

As the holidays approached in Madrid, the girls and I began to miss people, as well as the smells and sights of fall in New England. It was snowing back home. The date for lighting the town tree went by. I couldn’t seem to resist going  to Plaza Mayor and buying a Charlie Brown Christmas tree that I carried home. And just imagine eating pumpkin pie, and taking gingerbread out of the oven,  and….

Still, to prevent us from being too nostalgic, we would go somewhere really different for Christmas. The Canary Islands, or Istanbul, I had hoped.  But when the time came to make arrangements, we had already bought too many plane tickets for other trips. “So fine,” I thought, “We can at least get out of the big city and our little apartment, and go south where it will be warmer.” I asked Matt to find us a house for a week in Andalucía, near the beach.

Sure enough, on the Internet, he found a big, traditional Andalucian house for rent. It had 67 rave reviews. It was in Sanlucar de Barrameda, a town we had never heard of, but it seemed well positioned to allow us to take day trips to Portugal, Seville and maybe even Tangier if we got ambitious. And it was less than a mile from the beach!  
<><><><> <><><><> <><><><>

See Sanlucar north of Cadiz and at the mouth of the Rio Guadalquivir

As the time approached, my resolve to not try to recreate Christmas waned. I schemed how - in this unknown  house – I’d make Turkey with dressing, pies, and the special cream biscuits that we ALWAYS have on Christmas morning. I don’t know how many emails I sent my mother asking her to bring things when she came to visit in December. We ended up buying her an extra suitcase to carry it all.

When the day arrived to pack up the car, Matt could not understand the number of suitcases. “Well, err…” I offered, “This one has decorations and kitchen supplies, and these two have presents.” He looked dubious, “How about we open the presents now?”



Claire, "What, you brought the onion chopper and the wooden reindeer?"



With the car visibly weighed down by our luggage, we headed off. On our way, we stopped for two nights in Seville. What a fun city. Beautiful buildings and squares,



Orange trees by the Alcazar


fabulous shopping,

Want your teenagers to feel at home in a city? Find Starbucks.

Fabulous fabric store. Marlowe, where are you?

sophisticated restaurants,

Sophisticated? Well, very cool, anyway. This one has a wall of lipstick marks in the bathroom.

bands playing in the streets, and everywhere people celebrating.

Our 16 year old, Claire, would have been glad to be left behind. This feeling quadrupled when she got to Sanlucar. The GPS whisked us past some scruffy-looking bars and institutional housing complexes, straight to a “Centro Commercial” featuring a McDonald’s restaurant. In her most sarcastic voice, Claire announced, “The ‘city center’ is a McDonald’s! Like that is IT. A MCDONALD’S!”

This is not fair really, as my mother, Matt and I later discovered. Sanlucar is justifiably proud of its Manzanilla sherry and its legendary seafood restaurants at the mouth of the Guadalquivir River. We happily spent one afternoon at a bar sampling locally caught langostinos while comparing the flavors of Fino, Amontillado and Oloroso sherries.

This fabulous bartender gave us a crash course in sherries.

But in the end, I had to agree. This was the sort of town you might stop in to see a sight or two on your way to somewhere else.  

And those 67 rave reviews of the house, were they written by polar bears?  Or, more likely, people who came in the summer, and were absolutely passionate about sherry, seafood and bullfighting – posters of toreadors covered the walls.  Why did we think that southern Spain is warm in December? It is actually surprisingly chilly, and even more so in a house with 60cm thick walls designed to keep the heat out.  The interior courtyard looked lovely as we dashed past in our sweaters and coats.

Undeterred, that first night, Matt and the girls managed to buy a small Christmas turkey and some wilted vegetables at the run-down Super Sol supermarket, and I had brought the key ingredients for the pies and biscuits.   We all huddled together in the kitchen to stay warm, and get Christmas eve dinner going - chicken curry, and perhaps a quick batch of cookies.

But where is the oven? Someone plugged in a space heater and a curcuit blew.

It turns out that southern Spain is extremely dark, as well as very cold, at 9 in the evening Christmas Eve. About 30 minutes later, we were able to establish that the house has two kitchens, two microwaves, three refrigerators, and no oven!  It seems the house was obligingly trying to assist my very ambivalent vow to not recreate Christmases past.

Christmas Eve dinner

In the end, the blending of old rituals in a strange new place was lovely in many ways. The Christmas decorations, the stockings, and presents were all the more appreciated within the strange surroundings.

Pies and biscuits were definately not going to happen

Margot's hopeless attempt to bake biscuits in a microwave

but, when wrapped in sweaters and scarves in a cold dining room, and eating stewed turkey,  the candles from home and my aunt’s cranberry relish were all the more delightful.

As we spent most of our time in the two rooms we could easily heat,

Granna telling the girls about leaving the Congo during the uprising in 1960.

we definitely achieved that sense of warmth and togetherness. The girls even slept in the living room on two pull out couches, after the heaters in their rooms blew.

This would certainly not be a Christmas that blends in with all the rest.

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL!!!!!!!!