Burn the Devil Day

So on December 7, every year, there is a celebration in Guatemala called "Quema del Diablo," or "Burn the Devil Day." You will see devil piñatas, ranging from about a foot tall to about five feet tall being sold. Here they are hanging on the side of the street. I did buy one for like 25 Quetzales, which is like $3.50.

There are also fireworks sold everywhere. People gather up the garbage in their house, put it into a pile on the streets, and at 6 pm, everyone lights their devil piñatas on fire and starts burning the pile of trash. Fireworks are set off and it is pretty much just mad chaos going on in the streets. This holiday is supposed to symbolize taking all of the bad stuff out of your house and burning it to purify your house for the Christmas season. An interesting way to do it. It causes quite a bit of pollution in the air, and actually this year, the Minister of the Environment actually sent out a letter asking Guatemalans not to participate in this day because of the pollution that it causes. It was quite the scene to watch. After spending the morning at the school at the Christmas party with the orphanage, we headed over to a couple's house from school who were having a holiday dinner. It was wonderful by the way. We had Thanksgiving dinner,
a full on turkey and mashed potatoes (no brown gravy mom!!!), and pumpkin pie. It was soooo delicious and I ate up that turkey like I hadn't eaten in a few weeks!

In fact, here I am eating some of Stephanie's turkey leg!! I was too embarrassed to take my own!!

After dinner, we took some fun pictures with the devils.

We got the fireworks all ready to go. We stuffed them inside the devils so they would all go off when we lit the devils on fire. Wendy stopped and bought just a few fireworks. Ha ha.

After getting all ready for the big festivities, I took a little rest in Adam and Kari's hammock. I am surprised I ever got up!!!!

Then we set everything on fire, in which you can see in the videos in the following post!!!! Here are a few after shots of the piñatas when we had finished our fire!!!

The Guatemalans next to us had this huge fire going so we were giving the guys a hard time that we only had a small gringo celebration and not a big fire like the true Guatemalans did. So they made this big fire for us!!!!!

What a fun tradition to take part in, even if it did seem a little strange!!!!