Christmas in Costa Rica

Costa Rican Christmas decorations

Our family tradition with Christmas is that we spend one year at home and the children come to us, and the next year we go to the children for Christmas. I have found that as Christmas gets more hectic I have enjoyed it less and less and, so I found I was enjoying the stress free Christmases away from home. We normally went to out son's place in Ottawa or Toronto and his Christmases were very low key. We went from giving piles of gifts to just stockings, and finally we skipped the gifts all together. We made Christmas more about doing things together as a family family rather than the traditional “Christmas Stuff”, and I found I enjoyed it more.

This year, our daughter decided she wanted to go to Costa Rica for her “honeymoon” during her Christmas break and suggested we come along for Christmas. She also invited her new husband's mom and her husband. Although she did insist on heading off on her own for her actual “Honeymoon”. Our son decided that “Roughing”it in Costa Rica was not his idea of a vacation so he headed off to France instead. So, this would be a completely different Christmas. New family members, new experiences.

Costa Rica is an amazing country. It has the same temperature all year with an average of 25º C every day, so it's not really the Canadian idea of Christmasy, but I think I can live with it. The sun rises at 6:00 am and sets at 5:00 pm every day, 365 days a year. They have a rainy season and a dry season. Their people are among the happiest in the world, and have one of the best education and health systems. Their life expectancy is as good as most “highly developed” countries at 79 years. What's not to like here?

Our hosts here at the villa tried to make the place a bit Christmasy with a little artificial tree and a twinkling centre-piece, as well as three cute Santa hats and a huge poinsettia, but often we forgot to turn the tree on and the twinkling centre-piece was a nuisance so got moved aside.

The girls did go Christmas dinner shopping and although I suggested that Costa Ricans did not eat turkey, they found a butterball so it was purchased and carted up the mountain. The new son-in-law Derek made his delicious pizza for Christmas eve, and although he complained about having to use a mix for the dough, they turned out as good as usual.

Our daughter Alisha made her usual eggs Benedict for breakfast on Christmas morning. Getting Christmas Dinner going was a problem because it was hard to get everyone out of the pool to get things ready. Everything did however fall into place as it always does, and Christmas dinner was a huge success.

But it was a bit odd eating it out in the gazebo beside the pool. It was however warm, comfortable relaxing, and delicious.

I hope everyone else had a wonderful holiday season as well.

Merry Christmas From Costa Rica (Nolan, Mary, Art, Regis, Derek & Alisha)