Italo J. Zarate La Night Before Christmas

Annotation

When my father passed away, he left behind some old newspaper clippings. One was a poem that was printed in 1948 in the Brownsville Herald. It was a version of "T'was The Night Before Christmas" in Tex-Mex lingo. In South Texas, a great majority of Texans are of Mexican descent and most are also bilingual. Mixing both English and Spanish words in their conversations is very common. We call it Tex-Mex. When I saw the poem in the clipping 74 years later, I decided to try my spin at it. My project evolved into a much longer and very humorous poem with illustrations. The ending where the wife tells her hubby to "Tocame el Wiwicho" is hilarious. In Spanish, "tocame" can mean to touch or it can also mean to play, like a musical instrument. What is El Wiwicho? Well, that's something you'll figure out when you read the poem.