“Julio Hummingbird was tiny, about the size of a chocolate bar, but he didn’t mind being small until one evening when he visited his favorite bird feeder in the garden of Señora Sanchez. There sitting right on top of it was Oscar Oriole, big, bad, beautiful and bold.”

Thousands of pilgrims began swarming the small Jalisco town of Cajititlan de los Reyes as of December 31 to pay devotion to the town’s religious patrons Gaspar, Melchior and Balthazar, better known as the Wisemen of the Orient.

If you want to get 2014 off to a light-hearted start, don’t miss Ajijic’s wild and wacky Año Nuevo parade to be put on January 1 by residents of the west-end Barrio de Guadalupe. 

Recently Lake Chapala’s web-boards have been deluged with inquiries from people concerned as to the whereabouts of Viño Blanco, the white donkey formerly owned by the late Peter Moir. She was adopted by Yves and lived by his restaurant on the lakeshore until the restaurant moved. Since then, as one of her fans wrote in panic, “She’s disappeared!”

Long-time Ajijic resident Denny Allison qualifies as a jolly-spirited Christmas fanatic. Over more than two decades of residence he has accumulated a collection of holiday decorations so huge that he and his Mexican wife spend more than three weeks arranging more than 1,500 pieces that adorn practically every inch of their entire west-end abode.

The foyer at Chapala City Hall is the venue for the huge exhibition of landscapes depicting Biblical tales that is on loan from the town of San Antonio Tlayacapan.