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Mexican Living: Christmas

I have no memory of Christmas, 2003. Now before you jump to one of those, "Oh, yeah we know," conclusions let me say that both my wife and I were deathly ill from some flu bug that we contracted while visiting San Miguel de Allende.

We spent Christmas, 2003, crawling to the bathroom and then back to bed. We were not even able to celebrate our wedding anniversary that was the day after Christmas.

This was to be our first Christmas in Mexico and we were disappointed to say the least.

Christmas, 2004, we were able to see a Mexican Christmas in Puerto Vallarta where we vacationed with some friends.

Christmas in Mexico is familiar and yet delightfully different--foreign. And, I must add, an exhausting month of celebrations.

The celebrations begin December 3rd with the LA VIRGEN DE GUADALUPE. This is the Patron Saint of Mexico whose celebration lasts until December 12th. They say The Virgin is "the Mother of God" as she appeared on Tepeyac, the pre-Hispanic site of the temple to Tontanslin.

Being more a symbol of Mexican nationalism, the Mexican devotion to her seems, at least to this author, to surpass the real religious veneration. The Virgin is what unites the normally strict and obvious social classes. She transcends class structure.

Though the celebration of the LA VIRGEN DE GUADALUPE seems foreign to the American's experience, the Mexican Nacimiento is all too familiar.

Spanish monks first introduced Nacimiento or The Nativity scene. It has since taken on some of the local tradition and influences.

For example, there is the "rooster crowing" to announce the birth of the Christ child. There is Satan lurking in his cave to tempt the shepherds on their journey to see the Christ child. There is also another uniquely Mexican twist to this Nativity:

"Foreigners are frequently confused when confronted by nativity scenes and other Christmas decorations all through January, and even into February. Even more puzzling to newcomers are 4 inch figures of Mary and Joseph and a nearly life-size Christ child. Nevertheless, there is tradition to explain this, too. On January 6, during the fiesta to honor the arrival of the Three Kings at the manger, a special ring-shaped bread called the Rosca?will be served. Baked into the bread is one or more small plastic figures of the Child God. The guests who find these images in their serving of bread are named the Godparents of the Christ Child from the Nacimiento. It is then their responsibility to host a party on February 2, El Dia de Candlelaria or the Day of Purification, the final celebration of a Christmas holiday which began on December 3 with the beginning of nine day celebration of The Virgin of Guadalupe." [1]

There are, of course, The Posadas. After the arrival of the Spaniards, this tradition of nine days of children's processions, a reenactment of the birth of Christ, the monks invented this as a means to evangelize the Aztecs.

"This procession symbolizes the journey made by Joseph and Mary from Nazareth to Bethlehem and Josephs search for shelter (Posada) at an Inn (also Posada). The peregrinos (pilgrims) include Joseph leading Mary on a burro, an Angel, shepherds, kings, and a large flock of excited, giggling, jostling, bumping, wiggling, shiny-eyed others, most with bright ribbon and flower decked shepherds?staffs which they tap in time to the music." [2]

The children march from house to house with "Joseph" asking for "room at the inn." They are refused until they hit the prearranged house where they are finally admitted and a party ensues.

There is so much more: The Piatas, The Pastorels, La Noche Buena, Navidad, the giving of La Flor de la Nochebuena, Dia de Innocents, and Ao Viejo and Ao Neuva.

Check out this web site for additional information:

http://www.mexconnect.com/mex_/feature/xmasindex.html

[1] Christmas Hoildays in Mexico: Festivals of Light, Love, and Peace; by Judy King [2] Ibid

Doug Bower is a freelance writer and book author. His most recent writing credits include The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Houston Chronicle, and The Philadelphia Inquirer, and Transitions Abroad. He lives with his wife in Guanajuato, Mexico.

His new book Mexican Living: Blogging it from a Third World Country can be seen at http://www.lulu.com/content/126241

posted by streamyx-test42426 @ 11:22 PM 0 comments

Communication Revolution With Internet Technology

The Internet has recently celebrated its thirty-sixth anniversary. Originally designed around 1969 to allow the exchange of packets of bits between computers, it remained for a long time restricted to the exchange of scientific data between scientists and secure information within governments. Then electronic mail and bulletin boards became increasingly popular among those with access to it.

Actually, it was only in the 1990s that the Internet became a popular means of communication. When in 1993, the US federal government opened up the network to commerce, the creation of the Hypertext Mark-Up Language (HTML) laid the basis for universal accessibility.

Since then the growth has been phenomenal. Different surveys today suggest that fifteen percent of people worldwide are using the Internet, or simply "the Net." The daily use of the World Wide Web is gaining tremendous popularity among those possessing the adequate tools and means to explore it, and the number of users increases by the hour. In fact, the Internet has revolutionized the computer and communications world like nothing before.

The invention of the telegraph, telephone, radio, and computer set the stage for this unprecedented integration of capabilities. The Internet is at once a world-wide broadcasting capability, a mechanism for information dissemination, and a medium for collaboration and interaction between individuals and their computers without regard for geographic location.

According to a recent research published by Gulli and Signorini (2005), Google claims to index more than 8 billion pages, MSN Beta claims about 5 billion pages, Yahoo! at least 4 billion and Ask/Teoma more than 2 billion. But estimating the size of the whole Web is quite difficult, due to its dynamic nature.

Nevertheless, it is possible to assess the size of the publicly indexable Web. As the two scholars state, the indexable Web is defined as "the part of the Web which is considered for indexing by the major engines." In their short paper, Gulli and Signorini managed to revise and update the estimated size of the indexable Web to at least 11.5 billion pages as of the end of January 2005. They also estimated the relative size and the overlapping that occurs by the largest Web search engines. Precisely Google was found to be the largest engine, followed by Yahoo!, Ask/Teoma, and MSN Beta.

Adopting the methodology proposed in 1997 by two other scholars, Bharat and Broder, but extending the number of queries used for testing from 35,000 in English, to more than 438,141 in 75 different languages, the two researchers remark that an estimate of the size of the web is useful in many situations, such as when compressing, ranking, spidering, indexing and mining the Web.

The Web, as it stands today, has allowed global interpersonal exchange on a scale unprecedented in human history. People separated by vast distances, or even large amounts of time, can use the Web to exchange, or even mutually develop, their most intimate and extensive thoughts, or alternately their most casual attitudes and spirits.

Emotional experiences, political ideas, cultural customs, musical idioms, business advice, artwork, photographs, literature, can all be shared and disseminated digitally with less individual investment than ever before in human history.

Jonathon Hardcastle writes articles on many topics including Business, Finance, and Employment.

posted by streamyx-test42426 @ 9:52 PM 0 comments

Communication Revolution With Internet Technology

The Internet has recently celebrated its thirty-sixth anniversary. Originally designed around 1969 to allow the exchange of packets of bits between computers, it remained for a long time restricted to the exchange of scientific data between scientists and secure information within governments. Then electronic mail and bulletin boards became increasingly popular among those with access to it.

Actually, it was only in the 1990s that the Internet became a popular means of communication. When in 1993, the US federal government opened up the network to commerce, the creation of the Hypertext Mark-Up Language (HTML) laid the basis for universal accessibility.

Since then the growth has been phenomenal. Different surveys today suggest that fifteen percent of people worldwide are using the Internet, or simply "the Net." The daily use of the World Wide Web is gaining tremendous popularity among those possessing the adequate tools and means to explore it, and the number of users increases by the hour. In fact, the Internet has revolutionized the computer and communications world like nothing before.

The invention of the telegraph, telephone, radio, and computer set the stage for this unprecedented integration of capabilities. The Internet is at once a world-wide broadcasting capability, a mechanism for information dissemination, and a medium for collaboration and interaction between individuals and their computers without regard for geographic location.

According to a recent research published by Gulli and Signorini (2005), Google claims to index more than 8 billion pages, MSN Beta claims about 5 billion pages, Yahoo! at least 4 billion and Ask/Teoma more than 2 billion. But estimating the size of the whole Web is quite difficult, due to its dynamic nature.

Nevertheless, it is possible to assess the size of the publicly indexable Web. As the two scholars state, the indexable Web is defined as "the part of the Web which is considered for indexing by the major engines." In their short paper, Gulli and Signorini managed to revise and update the estimated size of the indexable Web to at least 11.5 billion pages as of the end of January 2005. They also estimated the relative size and the overlapping that occurs by the largest Web search engines. Precisely Google was found to be the largest engine, followed by Yahoo!, Ask/Teoma, and MSN Beta.

Adopting the methodology proposed in 1997 by two other scholars, Bharat and Broder, but extending the number of queries used for testing from 35,000 in English, to more than 438,141 in 75 different languages, the two researchers remark that an estimate of the size of the web is useful in many situations, such as when compressing, ranking, spidering, indexing and mining the Web.

The Web, as it stands today, has allowed global interpersonal exchange on a scale unprecedented in human history. People separated by vast distances, or even large amounts of time, can use the Web to exchange, or even mutually develop, their most intimate and extensive thoughts, or alternately their most casual attitudes and spirits.

Emotional experiences, political ideas, cultural customs, musical idioms, business advice, artwork, photographs, literature, can all be shared and disseminated digitally with less individual investment than ever before in human history.

Jonathon Hardcastle writes articles on many topics including Business, Finance, and Employment.

posted by streamyx-test42426 @ 2:32 AM 0 comments