Adiós to the Valley - part three

Christmas and New Year happily pass with a minimum of disruption. The Santa Claus piñatas on sale above seem cheerfully incongruous, to me not the locals. Increasingly, my Christmases are endured in warmer climates, but I still find the absence of snow mildly disconcerting, if pleasantly so.

Don, Jode and I cycle along three miles - 'three' is not a typo - of Christmas lights in Hidalgo.

Mainly known for vicious local politics and being a border transit point for drugs and illegals, Hidalgo redeems its reputation with the lights and an annual international festival. Hidalgo's mayor meets the mayor of the Mexican city opposite to pledge eternal friendship. Both make diplomatic comments studiously avoiding the fact that wintering Americans (and Canadians, for that matter) now avoid the Mexican city like the plague.

The 'unChristmasy' crocodile sums up my feelings about Christmas.

Still, on Christmas Eve, I give in and join neighbours in lighting hundreds of candles lining the streets of our little community. Really quite pretty.

Christmas morning, I inspect my oranges and lemons ('say the bells of St. Clement's').

Later, a lovely dinner with Don and Jode, and I, with relief, have survived another Christmas.

Next, New Year, which, as in the Philippines, is an invitation to mayhem. See:

http://trainsandboatsandplanesandtheoddbus.blogspot.ca/2011/01/blog-post.html

What is it about places with a Spanish heritage that leads to such an explosion of, well, gunpowder and bullets?

All along the Valley, fireworks stores with enough weaponry to defeat the Taliban and Saddam, and throw in the Iranians for good luck, open up. Flag-wavers can buy the 36 shot 'Let Freedom Ring' for $46.50.

Neighbours, impressed by my Christmas candle efforts, hope to save me from New Year's Eve gunfire. I am warned to take cover. As in the Philippines, idiots take midnight as an invitation to fire guns (of which there are one or two in this country) into the air. Most, having been dozing during school science classes,  don't know that bullets eventually stop going up. This is the damage caused by a descending bullet on the sturdy metal roof of a carport on my street.

Amazingly, I awake unharmed on the first morning of 2013.