La Fiesta Part 1: La Piñata
Family descended for a momentous birthday.
“We’re thinking about coming to visit you for my birthday,” my mom said to us months ago. “Could we also invite some other people?”
Andrea was sitting next to me on the couch and we had the call on speakerphone. When I looked at her she silently nodded her head. “Sure,” we told my mom. “We’d love that.”
What my parents had called to propose had been on our minds since before we even moved. We’ve always loved hosting people but in New York City we had a modestly sized walk-up apartment with two bedrooms, one of which served as a home office for Andrea between the hours of 8-5 and a living room the rest of the time. The room was large enough for a couch, a desk pushed up against a wall, and we could squeeze an inflatable mattress into the remaining space. There was room for nothing else.
Whenever we had overnight guests, which was actually fairly often, filling the empty floor space with the mattress significantly disrupted the day-to-day flow of our lives. So, when we first began considering a move to Oaxaca a particular draw was the ability to have a comfortable space for visiting guests.
Our house in Oaxaca breaks down into discrete zones, in large part because our house is built on levels on the side of a hill. We have a total of four bedrooms, two upstairs and two downstairs, and the downstairs was originally built as an in-law apartment complete with its own kitchen and living room. There’s a couch and two handmade wooden chairs, a large patio with a wicker couch and two wicker chairs, and the two bedrooms open up onto a courtyard with a fountain and a metal patio table which can seat four. Upstairs is a couch and a counter which can seat four, my office has a twin-size mattress on a wide concrete bench which looks out over our valley, and we have seating for at least 15 people in the poolside palapa.
We can comfortably sleep 8 overnight guests (assuming 2 guests per bed) and, theoretically, the house is large enough that people can recline and pass their time without them (and us) feeling cramped. Were we to host someone who was particularly antisocial (or annoying) it’s conceivable we could go entire days without directly interacting with them.
Hosting a large group of people is never easy, but guest list built itself quickly and without drama. Besides my parents, our guests of honor who hadn’t yet visited our home here, we’d host my mom’s sister Debbie and her husband Rob, my sister Larisa, her husband Paul, and their three children, and my grandfather’s cousin Carol, who we’d grown quite close to during our time in New York. While Larisa and her family would stay nearby at a local cabaña we had enough bedrooms for everyone else, giving us, for the first time, a completely packed home.
The birthday my parents wanted to celebrate here was a milestone, putting my mom at an age where she’d really rather not have me tell people exactly which birthday had finally rolled around. It was a big one, though, and as a result we were inclined to, well, go big with it.
In the 10 and a half months since we first moved to Oaxaca we’ve seen or encountered countless parades, festivals, quinceañeras, bodas (weddings), and birthdays. We’ve seen people set up tents large enough for a hundred people, hire brass bands with literally dozens of performers, and have fireworks shot high into the sky over the center of our neighborhood. Oaxaca is a place where, if you’re creative and have the money, the sky’s the limit for how fancy a special day can be. Because of a strong U.S. dollar, the already generous exchange rate, and the relatively low cost of services here, we knew that we could pull off a substantially larger celebration than we could in the United States.
The real question, then, was just how showy and spectacular did we want this birthday celebration to be?
There are few things in the world Andrea loves more than making lists and we soon had a document where she was recording all the potential options for my mom’s birthday party. Did we want a…
Mariachi band?
Marimba player?
Fireworks? (Yes, really.)
A person grilling meat to order or making tlayudas?
A ceviche food truck?
A piñata?
We decided to start with the easiest possible option, the piñata, that cornerstone of Mexican birthdays.
Piñatas are incredibly common here and every single time we go out, no matter where we go, we see them for sale. Not only are piñatas sold at shops which will have dozens of them on display (often shaped like superheroes, professional wrestlers, or video game characters) they’re also made by people as a side hustle, constructed in the backs of little tiendas and even in private homes. And, as I’ve written about before, it’s also quite easy to buy the candy for them.
Even though piñatas are everywhere it still felt worthwhile to get a recommendation and so I turned to our friend Ehren, proprietor of the online wholesaler Hecho. She recommended a shop relatively close to the village where she and her husband Erick live and soon after I texted the number she gave me, reaching a woman named Magali.
“Esas son algunas si gusta le mando otras,” Magali wrote. “Those are some, if you like I will send you others.”
Magali’s piñatas are handmade, so the fact that she had so many available designs and configurations was incredible. People must be very particular about their piñatas, we thought to ourselves.
We ultimately opted for the first option pictured here, “90,” although with a different name and a significantly lower age. Perhaps the most remarkable part of the entire endeavor was the price of 320 pesos; around $18.
The commissioning and purchase of the piñata was really what set things in motion, and soon after we began more seriously considering our food options. Many things are possible in Oaxaca, and we considered ceviche, lamb Barbacoa, tamales, tacos, tlayudas, and far more besides. We did also seriously think about having live music, but quickly realized the fireworks might be just a bit over the top.
What we eventually settled on, after a consultation with my father, far outshone any of our initial plans, and will be the subject of next week’s free post.
It sounds like you are ready for a rollicking good time!