More on Parrandas in Puerto Rico and missing the island

A friend of mine posted this in her livejournal...

Quiero dar una parranda
sparkofcreation's daily Christmas Carol posts got me to thinking about my own Christmas traditions. It's amazing how the same holiday can be celebrated so differently in different countries. Christmas in the US is so different from Christmas in PR and the people to whom I say that here don't really seem to understand me when I try to explain. It's not that I don't like Christmas in the US, it's just that I'm so used to the upbeat Christmas celebrations of Puerto Rico that I feel like I'm missing something here. My parents have friends who own houses in the mountainous regions of PR and when I was younger, they'd always take my brother and me to the Christmas parties they'd throw. There was always all this wonderful traditional PR food there, and they'd hire a band to play traditional Christmas music from PR. Everyone would be dancing salsa or merengue and singing bomba y plena and trullas all over the place. And even though I usually found it a drag to go there because all the guests were always my parents' age and there was no one my own age to hang out with, I really do miss the atmosphere of the parties. So, for those of you who are unfamiliar with our Puerto Rican Christmas customs, or those of you who are Puerto Ricans living away from home and want to reminisce and feel somewhat nostalgic, these are some video clips I found on youtube of people playing parranda music:








I miss my home!