Panama's Upcoming Holidays
(offshorewave.com) It’s a holiday weekend this weekend in Panama: the country is closed on the 3rd, 4th and 5th of November as well as on the 10th and the 28th; this is the start of the holiday season in Panama. If you want to get anything done in Panama between the 3rd of November and the first of January it will take time. Panama has official holidays on the 3rd, 5th and 10th as well as the 28th of November. December 8th is Mother’s Day and then Christmas and the New Year.
When I think of the holiday season in Panama I think of November and especially the time just before Thanksgiving. In the old days when Panama had closer ties to the U.S., Thanksgiving was a Holiday that people in Panama celebrated with great enthusiasm. Today, the holiday itself hasn’t died out but the celebration around the holiday has died. Panama used to do Thanksgiving with great fanfare, but that tradition has died out slowly since I’ve arrived in Panama. The “oldest generation” in Panama will remember Thanksgiving in the Canal Zone. When I first arrived in Panama people normally celebrated “Dia de Gracias” at a hotel in Panama City. The old Radisson at the World Trade Center had a very good spread on Thanksgiving. Today, you should still search the hotels or business clubs of Panama in order to see if they celebrate Thanksgiving. Of course, there are still plenty of people in Panama who will be happy to celebrate “Dia de Gracias” with you, if you have something to drink and a place to relax.
I remember one year, in November 1999, when I celebrated Thanksgiving at one of those Panamanian restaurants that suddenly appears and then disappears just as fast it appeared. The restaurant was called Tio Dave’s and was run by a Texan from Houston who liked to cook Barb-que. The restaurant was located in a strip mall off Via Espana in central Panama City. The place where Tio Dave’s was located is now a religious bookstore. Tio Dave was a big white Texan whose wife was from Bocas del Toro, Panama. She had left Bocas Del Toro years earlier and was back in Panama – in November 1999 - because of her husband’s legal troubles in Texas.
Anyway, Tio Dave’s was a short-lived restaurant in Panama but for the short time it was open they did a pretty good Texas bar-b-que. Tio Dave’s was nothing special; the interior was a mediocre twist on a Texan conservative motif. The bar-b-que was very good considering it was real Texan bar-b-que in downtown Panama City.
Tio Dave cooked a very good – if sweaty – Texas Thanksgiving meal. I say sweaty because Tio Dave liked to sweat over the food. His brow would always drip some sweat. It was most obvious when he had to stand over and cut Turkey. But he knew how to cook meats. All the flavors were very simple and the Turkey was perfectly cooked.
Not the biggest, but certainly the most important holiday in Panama is Mother’s Day. In the interior of the country people travel from Panama City back to their small little towns and villages in the deep interior in order to see and celebrate Mother’ Day with their families. In Panama City people celebrate Mother’s Day by going to a restaurant with the whole family.
