Christmas Program

     We take great pride in our Christmas Program and the spirit of giving it fosters. This Program brings a healthy meal, gifts and a multitude of smiles to families who otherwise would go without during the holiday season.

The Christmas Program provides:

Christmas Tamale Basket Dinners

     A meal of specially prepared tamales with seasonal trimmings is the traditional Christmas dinner of the indigenous Guatemalans. But many families cannot even afford to feed themselves nutritious daily meals. Mayan Families prepares and gift wraps baskets containing enough food to prepare a festive Christmas dinner for as many as 12 people.

     Each basket contains oil, 15 lbs of rice, a block of drinking chocolate (the traditional drink at midnight), a loaf of bread with which they eat the tamales at midnight, raisins, grapes, apples, sugar, 5lbs of meat, tomatoes, 1lb of coffee, leaves to wrap the tamales, cloves, pepper, sesame, pumpkin seeds. As an added value, the plastic bucket that holds the groceries is a useful household item after the holidays.

Toys

     We make an extra effort to ensure that every needy child we know receives at least one nicely wrapped Christmas gift. Every year, hundreds of toys and gifts are given to wide-eyed, smiling and very grateful children.

Parties

     During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Mayan Families delivers tamale food baskets, gifts and even Santa Claus to poor, remote villages and orphanages.

How You Can Help Bring the Spirit of Christmas to the Needy

     A contribution of $30 will provide a tamale food basket for a needy family and enable us to bring the spirit of Christmas to impoverished people.

     Please select the Contribute button. All donations of any amount are gratefully appreciated and will be used only for this Program.

If you would like your contribution to go towards someone special then send a message to personaldonation@mayanfamilies.org after you have made your payment. This will alert our distribution team. Please note that our primary territory is the Northern region of Lake Atitilan. Our delivery of tamale baskets is limited to our headquarters in Panajachel and to groups in our primary territory.

Most Recent Headlines for the Christmas Program

May 15th 2008 Update (05/15/2008 01:57 PM)
Christmas 2007 (04/10/2008 01:42 PM)