Latin America Correspondent

Christmas in San Miguel de Allende - with Greg Gunter

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Latin America Correspondent Jon Bonfiglio talks to Real Estate Agent Greg Gunter about Christmas in Mexico's iconic San Miguel de Allende. 

For more information on Greg's work and real estate investments & opportunities, click on:

https://bhhscolonialhomessanmiguel.com/

https://dreamprohomesluxury.com/

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Jon Bonfiglio:

I'm here live in San Miguel, and I'm delighted to be with Greg Gunter. And it's Christmas, Greg.

Greg Gunter:

It's the holidays. Felices fiestas at todos. That means Merry Christmas. Happy holidays, actually, to everyone. You can see we're here in front of the festive Rockefeller Plaza tree. So it's a little bit smaller than Rockefeller Plaza, but pretty close to the same size. We're going to talk about the holidays in San Miguel de Allende.

Jon Bonfiglio:

How does that how does that how do the holidays manifest? I mean, I guess two questions that are related to each other. One, how specifically does it manifest in in terms of San Miguel de Allende? And also, because of course, you know, you've been in San Miguel now for 16 years. How it's obviously different from your memory of Christmas. And I'm guessing there's some real attractions culturally important too.

Greg Gunter:

The interesting thing about uh the holidays of Christmas, especially in in Mexico, and especially in San Miguel de Allende, because that's where we are today, that's what we're gonna kind of focus on that. You know, obviously Christmas is a big deal for Catholics, so that aspect of it has always been a big uh tradition in in all of Mexico and especially in San Miguel de Allende. There's so many Americans that have been in in San Miguel de Allende since the late 30s that they have become, they have adopted a little bit more of the American Christmas tradition. So you see more of the big trees and the more decorations, you know, they've gotten away from a little bit of the religious uh theme in the in the public areas and doing more of what we kind of think of as the uh American-style Christmas plan. So and decorations with the big boxes, the gifts and things like that. Well, you know, Mexicans don't do gift giving until 3 Kingsday on January 6th, way after we've forgotten about Christmas. So there are different traditions in Mexico, but San Miguel has sort of adopted a lot of those American things as well. It's kind of interesting to see the mix of the two during San Miguel.

Jon Bonfiglio:

And it's almost like a hybridity of culture, Miguel, which yeah, we've talked about it a number of times, but it's interesting again, just to emphasize that there's such a small place to have this sort of cosmopolitan gathering and not just something also uh decision. And it's certainly well.

Greg Gunter:

It's definitely pretty unique, I think, uh for a small It's definitely unique, and you know what a lot of people love to do is wander around and look at the the little crushes or nativity scenes that people create. They will create those in their living room, for instance. They'll they'll block off the living room and have the door open all night long, and people could come through and take a look at the nativity scene that they've set up. We also they can't quite see it from the uh it's out of camera range right now, but we'll we'll show you a little bit of footage in just a little bit of the gazebo that's in the town square there. And they literally set up a live, crest, live nativity scene with figures and real sheep and the real donkey. It's it's amazing. So there is still some of that throwback to the old religious theming that you see, but in a very charming provincial way. That's what we love about San Miguel. It's a very cosmopolitan city, but we still have a lot of that throwback to the provincial, you know, Christmas theming with the nativity scenes and the crushes. We love that. So we're standing in the uh town square. It's called our town square. In most of Mexico, the town square is called the Zocolo. And if any of you have ever been to Mexico City, you know that's what they call the big plaza there, the Zocolo. Here it's called the Jardin. We have a lot of trees here, they're ficus-like trees, and so it becomes a garden environment, and so they call it the Jardin here. We're right in the Jardin, right next to the parroquia, which is our iconic Eiffel Tower figure of uh of San Miguel de Allende. And this is the Christmas tree that they set up every year. We're getting ready to light it in two nights. There's a big celebration, the whole town will come down and we'll all light up the Christmas tree, kind of like the Rockefeller, you know, kind of presentation that we do. But you'll see as we walk around here just a little bit, a little bit of the footage of a lot of the uh decorations that they put up around town, the strings of lights that they have, you know, people put ribbons around their doorways. Some of the doorways in town that we're gonna show you a little bit of in here are amazing. They'll put very elaborate decorative uh woven garlands around the doorways and the entryways to the distances and some of the better breakfast than the uh hotels around here.

Jon Bonfiglio:

So generally speaking, in in Mexico, the Central Plaza Captain Community in San Miguel is a place for people to come to, sit, spend time. It's a really public space. It's a really lived space, and of course it's the same here in in San Miguel too.

Greg Gunter:

The interesting thing about the Jardine for Mexicans is you know, many Mexicans don't have a living room. This is their public living room. So Sunday is the big family day, for instance, in Mexico. You you'd know that, John, you'd lived here so long. So a lot of the Mexicans come down on Sunday to hang out and kind of be together with family and you know to get an ice cream, you know, have some tacos. There's always two or three toy vendors selling, you know, inflatable balloons and things like that. Us gringos love to come down and watch them. So it's great people watching all weekend, to be honest with you, but especially on Sunday, because there's a lot of activity that goes on in the Hardine. So you see, you know, three or four or five different mariachi bands that are competing for competition with each other and you know, all the families wandering around, the food vendors. It's just an amazing experience to spend time in the Hardine, especially at Christmas. You know, they'll light up the uh Christmas tree here, they'll have a van, we'll have great music going on. So if you can come down next Christmas.

Jon Bonfiglio:

Um Greg, from a personal perspective, what were the things you know to look forward to about this sending?

Greg Gunter:

It's a really uh wow, don't make me get emotional here, John. From a personal standpoint, you know, I really think a lot of us think about giving, giving back, giving back to the community, giving back to my team, to my staff. Uh we are big supporters, for instance, we personally, me and my my business partner in my office are big supporters of Warren Buffett's giving fletch. And this year we're giving uh 10 university scholarships to Mexican kids. So giving is is a big deal, and that's something that we will really try to do year-round. I mean, we really we do it year-round. We just make a bigger push with business time because it tends to be more of a you know kind of a giving time of season. But that's really, you know, the biggest thing I think is giving back to the community and helping the community as much as we can, you know, building a lot of uh rapport with my with my staff. We have our big holiday party coming up. You'll get to see me like this again in another video in about another week, team.

Jon Bonfiglio:

Um since we've met, obviously you're a real map, but it's it's been pretty clear to me that you're also just really engaged with the community, participate a lot, and actively participate in cultural events, you're maybe giving it, making sure and sort of bringing people up as well, and supporting the uh the community. Has that always been the case with you? Is that something that started here? How is that sort of how how did that emerge in terms of your personal and other professional life?

Greg Gunter:

It's interesting. I was always involved with a lot of uh a lot of the health uh societies, a lot of the uh, you know, March at Dimes, uh Cancer Society. I was married to a nephrologist for 16 years. I was, you know, the kidney uh foundation, a lot of those kinds of organizations when I was uh in the United States. Down here I tend to work a lot more with uh organizations of the locals. So we're big supporters of an organization called Casita Lenda, which is a little bit like a habitat manager for uh the local Mexicans here. Um we built, we built, I think, about a, I think we're up to about 187 homes now for more families that live in the countryside. And you know, again, it's a very Mexican, actually not just Mexican, very San Miguel specific foundation that we really like to support. So I've kind of changed my support to much more locally based uh organizations that kind of help the locals here. And they provide health care for all Mexican kids here in San Miguel up to the age of 18. Any kind of health care. So it's amazing what what we do, the American community here does for the locals to kind of help with anything from helping get meals to the kids at breakfast time, health care, education. We have probably three or four different educational programs that we uh that are involved with. Uh Cambio provides scholarships for women, for instance. But not my local. Um, you know, uh Hubble Inside Atlantic provides any kind of scholarships, boys or girls, the biblioteca scholarship program that I just said I bought 10 scholarships for, you know, for kids. All of those are very locally based, and that's kind of gonna change in my focus since I've lived here is to be very locally based.

Jon Bonfiglio:

Um it seems to me as well that um people could come here, they choose to come here. I mean some people come here because it's beautiful and it's mentioned in Condenasta and various other things. But it also seems to me that it does something else does attract the particular kind of person who is looking for that that local connectivity that you maybe don't you don't you don't get in other parts in in more obvious tourist places like in Gabo or Puerto Rico, yeah, I don't know. There's a real kind of human scale to line that here and interconnectivity, which is highly desirable to people coming from from maybe other parts of the world, other cities, the US perhaps as well, that are left Perth.

Greg Gunter:

Yeah, clearly that's the case. We have 120 NGOs here in San Miguel, and I think all the two of them are funded, managed, and organized by Americans. So imagine that team, 118 NGOs that are managed by Americans and funded by Americans. We all sit on the board, we all contribute to them, we're all looking for, you know, four or five of them are dog organizations to help you neuter dogs and you know take care of dogs, but many of them are human-oriented, obviously, education-oriented, things like that. But 118 or so NGOs are run by Americans here. I'd be lucky if you found two in Cabo. It's a much more of a community uh outreach here. You know, Americans move here, retired, and they think I'd like something to do and I want to give back to my community, and so they volunteer their time and get heavily involved with two or three different NGOs, you know.

Jon Bonfiglio:

Um Greg, it's been a pleasure to speak to you over the course of these last few months. I'm looking forward to continuing uh the conversation, and of course, at this during this season, I want to miss you and yours and everybody here at Seminar.

Greg Gunter:

Thank you, John. And I'm gonna uh viewers, I want to give you one last little uh special insight about Christmas in Mexico. The poinsettia that you can see behind us here was created in Mexico. Here they're called the Noche Boina, but they were created in Mexico. Uh huh. Did you know that, John? I did, I did. But he did. He's lived here for 35 years, so he knows those things. I bet a lot of you didn't know that. They were created here in Mexico. So enjoy your poinsettias and your Christmas. Feliz Navidad Todos, this is a fias this time.

Jon Bonfiglio:

Thank you, Greg. Pleasure.