Santa, Satan, which is it?

Driving through the grocery store parking lot the other day we saw rows and rows of these pinatas being sold. My first thought was, "Why does Santa have a black beard?" Then I went on to thinking, "Why does Santa have a number on his chest?" Then I noticed the horns on his head and decided I better ask someone why Santa looked so Satanic here in Guatemala. I'm glad I didn't get around to asking any of our Guatemalan friends as they would have had themselves quite a little laugh.
It seems there is a holiday here called Day of the Devil. Today in fact. The pinata was not supposed to represent Santa at all, go figure with the red suit and black belt - what was I really supposed to think. The tradition of this holiday is as a cleansing of sins. It began as a Mayan holiday and now has Catholic influence mixed in. Families get together and burn their trash, and often one of these pinatas, as a way to cleanse their life of sin and get ready for Christmas. They sometimes fill the pinatas with fireworks as well (because down here we will take any excuse we can get to light off bombas.) Now to me that seems a little dangerous as the fireworks could just go willy nilly and hurt someone. I prefer the method that most of our neighbors used and that was to just light the bombas separately after the trash burning had begun.
Our whole neighborhood smells like a mixture of wood, trash, and firecracker smoke...not real pleasant.
It makes me sad to realize that there are many people here who actually believe that this helps to cleanse them of their sins and evil spirits. There may be a lot of missionaries here, but holiday's like this are evidence to the fact that there is still much Kingdom work to be done here. Please pray tonight for the many people here who still need to learn that Jesus, the reason for the season, is the only way to be cleansed.

On a side note - it was quite loud for a bit there with all the neighbors setting off their bombas. We are a bit frightened of how it will be on Christmas Eve which from what we have heard is way bigger and louder. It has been described by some others as sounding like being in a war zone. So, I guess we don't sing Silent Night down here.