Snow in Costa Rica

Three days before Christmas I was traversing San Jose through the central mall. The streets were packed with busy shoppers and peddlers selling their goods. It was the hustle and bustle that you might find the week before Christmas in the US as well.

Because Costa Rica lies close to the equator, the average yearly temperature is around 76 degrees. The weather rarely drops into the 60s, even high in the mountains. There is no snow here, making the prospect of a white Christmas seem comical. That said, they still sell snow frosted trees, rain deer pulling sleighs and snow globes.

Part of the holiday ritual in San Jose is to make it a white Christmas. There are hundreds of vendors in the streets selling white paper confetti. I was in a hurry, so as I bustled through the mall, I hoped to avoid the white snowflakes being tossed around. As I got close to the center of town, the crowd got denser, and the snow got thicker. It was literally snowing, and there was no way to avoid it.

As I stepped around a group of kids, I got hit with my first snowball. I wasn't ready for it, and had my mouth agape as the confetti filled my hair, shirt, and nose. I coughed, inhaling the little pieces of paper as another hit me, this time in my ear. Then another and another. I was being assaulted by confetti. People would walk up to me, look for a second and then douse me with another handful of paper. By the time I got to the bus, I was a walking snowman.

It is these small differences and beams of light that make Costa Rica such a wonderful place to be. A ritual where assaulting others with handfulls of confetti in the US would land you in jail or start a fight. The ideology that community is a thing of the past is killing the light spirt and enjoyment of life in our society. Who would have thought that a bag of confetti could unify a community, and create a white christmas where there is no snow.