The Spirit of Christmas

So the Christmas season starts in September here.

Not joking.

Businesses have had their lights and decorations up for more than a month.  The men on the street are selling glittery manger scenes and mini fake pine trees.  Yesterday I saw a man selling a Santa hat with a blinking light on the end. 

Every holiday season La Sirena has a Christmas festival in their smaller parking lot.  There you can find christmas delights such as blow up slides,  rock climbing, ice skating on plastic, and shooting Frosty the Snowman with a paintball gun. 

It was a ton of fun. 

We headed right to the plastic skating rink.  It was actually pretty close to real ice skating.  they had greased up the plastic really well so you could slide all over it.  We wore roller blades with ice skating blades on the bottom and skated all over the rink.  I was going much faster than all of the other people in the rink and was beginning to feel really proud of myself when I remembered that they were all Dominicans.  They had probably never been roller blading before, let alone ice skating. 

As we left, I saw a big sign advertising the Christmas Festival.  It said," Find the real meaning of Christmas with La Sirena's Christmas Festival!" 

I learned something.  The real meaning of Christmas is skating on greasy plastic, shooting a snowman with a paintball gun, and going down plastic blow up slides.