#2 Feliz Navidad

My mom's favorite Christmas song is Feliz Navidad. She's all smiles and gets downright giddy when she hears the song, dancing in the car (even while driving) and singing along in really bad Spanish. All conversation, station-surfing, and otherwise disruptive activities stop for the 3 minutes that Feliz Navidad plays.

My mom likes the song so much that she has tried to find a recording of the exact version they play on the radio. Since she hasn't yet succeeded, we have many different versions of Feliz Navidad buried in a box somewhere in my house. One of the cassette tapes she bought quickly became one of our favorites, and to this day, I smile when I hear "Mamacita, donde esta Santa Claus?" because it was featured on that tape.

The other day, my mom complained to me that even though she set her car radio to the holiday station as soon as Thanksgiving was over, she hasn't yet heard Feliz Navidad. This is a big deal, because she only plays the station in her car in the hopes that she will hear it every time she gets into the car.

Well, that dry spell changed today when I decided to turn on the radio as we were getting dinner ready. Feliz Navidad was the first song we heard, and I had turned on the radio just in time to hear it in its entirety. At hearing the first beats of the song, my mom gasped, put her hand over her mouth like she was hearing from a long-lost relative for the first time in years, and pointed at the radio with wide eyes and a big smile. She tried to sing along to the parts that didn't include the title words, used exaggerated arm gestures, and moved her hips along to the music in her mismatched sweats.

That's where this picture is from. At one point, she went from moving only her upper body to doing full dancing with my dog. Needless to say, Kodi didn't understand what was going on but found a lot of pleasure from all the excitement. She also picked him up and serenaded him at one point.

What can I say? I have a very merry mom.