It's Christmas on Guam...

To save me from the fate of spending my first Christmas on Guam eating hard-boiled eggs alone in my apartment, a colleague of mine invited me to his annual Christmas gathering.

The thing about Guam I am quickly figuring out, is that everybody knows everybody, and chances are, it's because they are related.

That being said, I was still surprised to arrive at a family gathering to find out that I was attending was actually a very large, seemingly public party, held at the regal, cliff-side estate (above) of one of the better known local patriarchs, who owns a beer distributing company on the island.

There were large outside tents decorated with lights, a live band (or at least, one guy who spent the whole night singing on a stage on the side of the property), a sprawling front-yard parking lot lit by stadium floodlights and attended by a group of 12-year-olds, who had either been stuck with the task of chauffeuring the many attendees parked in the far away regions of the property, or were just incredibly fond of the golf cart someone had loaned them.

There was a roasted pig (left) and the governor (apparently), a mixture of people who looked like family and people who were clearly not, like myself, and the young white guy from D.C. who is heading up the 2010 census on the island.

When I asked my colleague (I will call him "Jojo Santo Tomas") about the gathering, he said something about "65 first families." I thought maybe it was like, a Guam heritage thing, until he explained that no, in fact, it was literally the 65 families that made up his wife's side of the family. Apparently, her mother's family had 11 kids, who had among them 65 (or so) kids. Hence, the tents, the parking, the copious amounts of food, and well, the everybody.

It was pretty fascinating for me to think that the gathering, a veritable who's who of islanders, was actually one extended family reunion.

Other than that, the party was lovely, and much like parties everywhere, I talked to a drunk guy, who seemed to have story to tell me, but then forgot it, and then refused to carry on the conversation until I had seen the movie Avatar.

Toward 10pm, I found Jojo, who was busy in an large, open-air kitchen. There were still trays of unfinished desserts, main courses, a half-eaten pig and appetizers lying about, but he showed me a fully baked, brand new ham in a roast pan. Apparently they used to make sandwiches with leftovers for the second-wave of gorging, only for it to become a tradition on its own, thus requiring a ham.

Jojo started chopping and deep frying it, while a couple of women sliced open reams of Hawaiian rolls, still attached to one another, slathered on mustard and mayonnaise while shaking themselves to the music of the band.

Being a vegetarian, and somewhat sick with my usual Christmas plague, I couldn't actually eat the sandwiches. But I still enjoyed watching Jojo deftly slice and fry, and was reminded of my own somewhat smaller and quieter -- which is sort of a feat given my family -- holiday gatherings.



And it was nice.