Christmas of the Pinata

 In our family, we remember it as the Christmas of the Pinata. I was about 12 with three younger siblings. It was too cold outside to play that holiday and we quickly grew restless.

One of my sisters suggested we make a pinata, just like the children she’d read about while studying “Christmas Around the World.” A pinata, she explained, was a breakable animal figure filled with candy and hung from the ceiling. For Christmas, Mexican children enjoy being blindfolded, handed a stick, then encouraged to swing wildly until someone actually strikes the pinata, breaking it and showering everyone with candy.

We all thought it a great idea.

Unfortunately, none of us knew what a pinata was made of, so we experimented. Papier-mache sounded good, but we couldn’t figure out how to mold an animal figure and get candy inside such a gooey mess before it hardened.Then we went to a brown paper grocery bag, but our preliminary tests indicated the bag was too strong for our clubs. It probably would have worked if we had used baseball bats, but an unfortunate accident some months before had resulted in a harsh maternal edict prohibiting the swinging of bats inside the house. We settled on badminton rackets.

We also settled on a thinner brown paper bag—the kind you got at Woolworth’s. We taped homemade “legs” on the bag, then colored it until it had a vague animal appearance, sort of like if you crossed a small goat with a bunny rabbit. We filled it with candy and lots of other little things such as jacks, thread spools, toy soldiers and clothespins. We decided to hang our “animal” by looping it over a small nail driven into the molding above the entrance way between the dining and living rooms. After a day of pinata planning, trial and error, the moment was at hand.

And what a moment it was. I could go into more detail, but let me just say, we didn’t really have an official pinata rulebook. We did not know you’re supposed to go one at a time. Instead we blindfolded ourselves, grabbed our badminton rackets, then began to swing wildly at where we thought the pinata was hanging.

It was ugly. The result caused enough noise, yelps and crashes that a parent rushed into the room to intervene.

We gave up on the pinata business, but as with most disasters, there were lessons to be learned. First, there’s a good reason pinatas have yet to become part of most American holiday traditions. Second, now I know why they call them “rackets.”

And finally, a little sister, no matter how short, can hurt you.