Happy Father’s Day, Peru-style
A tension has been building up all week in our house as Father’s Day approaches. This was a low-key holiday for us back in the States — El Hijo would make El Fotografo a card at the last minute, or I’d haul him off to the mall to buy an electric razor — but since moving to Peru in ’07, Father’s Day has grown into an Event.
This change is partially due to the hoopla made by EH’s British-Peruvian school over Dia del Papá (and over Mother’s Day as well). From what I understand, this is common practice at schools in Lima.
I’d always thought of Father’s Day as a family affair but, no, in Peru it’s cause for a school-wide celebration to which the papas are invited on the Friday before FD weekend.
God forbid the father doesn’t show up at this thing. It’s a huge event for the kids, involving weeks of preparation: making of presents and cards, memorizing songs, learning dance routines.
Yes, dance routines.
Last month, I was serenaded at the school Mother’s Day celebration by El Hijo and two friends, who stood on stage and belted out “Burning Up” by the Jonas Brothers. No one else found the lyrics incongruous for such a tame celebration (“Baby, who turned the temperature hotter? / Cause I’m burning up, burning up for you, baby”). Te quiero, Mami!
Similarly, other big production numbers were prepared for yesterday’s Father’s Day extravaganza. There was a song in Spanish — you guessed it, “Te quiero, Papa” — with coordinated bopping about. Then EH and the other fifth-grade students gave a PowerPoint presentation featuring individually crafted odes to their respective fathers.
As El Fotografo told me later, the children weren’t afraid to tell their dads in public how much they loved them. Everyone was doing it — with photos and animations flashing in the background. Some kids had a favorite uncle or grandfather attend the event instead of their dad. But everyone had some male figure attending.
I believe it’s a good thing kids in Peru are encouraged to show love and affection for their parents. I can’t imagine the same thing happening in the States, though; there the separation of school and home life is clearly defined. Certainly a U.S. school wouldn’t cancel the week’s spelling quiz to give the students more time to practice their Father’s Day song, as EH’s school did this week. (That’s a lesson EH won’t forget: Dad trumps spelling.)
Today El Hijo woke up, ablaze with the idea that — in addition to writing two poems for his father and making him a cardboard Oscar statuette for “Father of the Year” — he had to buy his dad a gift for Sunday.
We tore around the department store SagaFalabella along with hundreds of other driven Peruvians, caught up in Father’s Day madness. The store was crammed with guy merchandise — chompas, fancy cellphones, big-screen TVs. In the end (don’t tell) we bought him a tracksuit for running in the cold Lima winter days.
In true Peruvian fashion, the store personnel wrapped our gift for free using some fastidious method that involved folding the paper so no bit of tape could be seen. After five long minutes, the smallish rectangular package was ready.
Gracias.
Happy Father’s Day to all.
Barbara
I am an American writer who lived in Lima for seven years (2007-2014), where I covered Andean traditions, melting glaciers and daily life in the capital for Miami Herald, MSNBC and Huffington Post. I now live and work in northern Florida where I champion climate change advocacy and compassionate, affordable eldercare.
9 Comments
Magaly
This article brought some childhood memories of mine in a Lima Catholic school. Celebrations like this were a BIG thing, and in addition my sibblings and I always orquestrated a private performance for Dad usually at sunrise, still in our pjs followed by a children made breakfast in bed.
Now that I live in the States I never thought that those kind of celebrations were different here than the way I grew up.
Oh well. I hope globalization makes us have more celebrations instead of less overtime 🙂
Nice article Barbara
Barb
Thanks, Magaly, for sharing your memories of Father’s Day in Lima. Wow, your dad must have been really touched by the sunrise performances of you & your hermanos.
Yes, I do think Peruvians make a bigger deal out of Father’s Day — or rather, should I say, they express their love differently. It seems that more and more FD in the US centers on buying things (seems like crass overstatement but I’ll stick by it) whereas in Peru there is this emphasis on putting on performances and, of course, eating a big almuerzo.
Yes, I too hope that globalization encourages countries to adopt different customs and add them to the mix. More not less. That was, after all, how the Incas conquered the neighboring tribes in Peru. They didn’t forbid the conquered people from worshipping their local gods; they added those gods/huacas to the Inca religious mix and everyone in the empire started celebrating those special days too. 🙂
April
Pretty nice post. I just came by your blog and wanted to say
that I have really enjoyed browsing your posts. Anyway
I’ll be subscribing to your feed and I hope you write again soon!
Junior
Hi, Barbara!
Peruvian red tape does give you a LONG migrane. No doubt about that. And yes, FD is a big deal here just as much as Mother’s Day and Christmas and all those major holidays.
As far as the Jona’s Bro’s song goes, it’s funny how sometimes they’ll play something in English that most people don’t understand. At a friend’s wedding, the bride and the groom danced to the unedited version of “You’re beautiful” by James Blunt… “she could see from my face that I was f*cking high….” I was, needless to say, in schock that the F word came up but almost no one noticed 🙂
jude
Unedited version or not, “You’re Beautiful” seems like a completely bizarre choice for a wedding song.
Barb
Junior — I’ve had a similar feeling — being shocked/mortified to hear certain song lyrics played inappropriately at gatherings in Peru and being the only person, probably, to understand the content. It’s a strange position to be in, no?
Someone should write about this in Spanish for Peruvian audiences because it happens all the time here. At my son’s school, the kids do public performances to X-rated rap lyrics and the parents just sit there, grinning and clapping.
That line is a classic for a wedding song. LOL.
Peruvian in Alaska
“folding the paper so no bit of tape could be seen.”
I just totally burst out laughing when I read this. You mean this isn’t a common practice?
That would explain the looks I get from my American husband when I’m giftwrapping…
Barbara
PIA — Well, Americans just plaster the outside of a package with tape, the more, the better.
Like your husband, it never occured to me that there was any other (or better) way. Then I received a package from a Brazilian friend who bought me hankies (for real) in Sao Paulo. The package was so beautifully wrapped, with not a piece of tape in sight — it was kind of a revelation to me. Somehow the paper was folded so it was easier to open — you just pulled on a fold and it came undone, rather than having to rip the paper apart.
I think it’s a South American thing. A superior method, IMO, but I don’t have the skills. Consider yourself lucky.
nEsSa
I think is funny how people outside Perú [by that I mean: not peruvian / not growing up here ] find some things so bizarre…
If you think that’s a lot, I don’t know what would you think about the present my sister and I gave to my dad for his birthday…
We [almost] wrapped the house with little notes full of phrases like “Happy birtday”, “You’re our hero”, “We love you” and so on… His birthday is on July and, the notes are still in every wall, window, shelf we stick them on… Maybe that’s to much for you…[ I think it was too much for my dad, too LOL]…
Not only school activities are like dad, from poems, to performances, gifts given away… one “dad of the classroom” who gets a present…
Once my school made something really nice… we all invited our parents for a ‘get together ‘[most of our parents know each other and are friends, like we go out together.. and so do them ]… Anyway, me had some food, talked, some parents talked about how they felt about their kids, some had sad stories, like the ones who took their grand pa’s because he was the ‘father figure’, our his dad has passed away… Some girls in the classroom said out loud, how proud they were about their fathers… and then… some fathers also shared a funny story [so tipical from us, peruvians ]…..
Every holyday is an excuse to get together, to get away, to share breakfast, lunch or dinner with your family… of course.. con ‘pollo a la brasa’ involved in most of them…
ps:I like your blog
ps2: I apologize if any mistake at writing… is the lack of practice…
nEsSA