Nestled in a complex on a sunny expanse in the northwestern stretches of Zapopan, many Christmases have gathered. Here, in a special seasonal exhibit called “Merry Christmas! A Tradition that Unites People,” the Trompo Magico interactive museum aims to show the different traditions of six countries at this time of year.
The exhibit, open as of last weekend, occupies a large room just off the main entrance to the museum itself. Festively-dressed museum guides greet visitors to corral them into a Christmas village of sorts where five child-sized cardboard houses, hung over wooden frames, adorn an area around a large Christmas tree. Each house allows visitors a peek into a typical Christmas in Russia, Sweden, Italy, Germany and Switzerland, or the United States.
Children are treated to images of a jolly, tubby, bearded “Ded Moroz” or Grandfather Frost from Russia. A Swedish woman wears a lit candle crown. In Germany children drool over gingerbread houses, and in the United States they see stockings hung by the ... television set.
There are extra information cards in Spanish outside the houses, but the museum has guides that can speak English also.
In the workshop area children can make their own holiday crafts. On weekends, visitors can observe short Christmas pageants on a little stage in the back. Tours and activities begin every hour on the weekends, and when guests arrive on weekdays.
One of the museum guides, Euridece Belen Ruiz Ramirez, offers her take. “It’s interesting when you see the traditions of different countries, that there are things that they share: spiritual, gastronomical, hopes. It’s good for the children to know other cultures.”
Entrance to the exhibit is included in the normal price of the museum, 35 pesos for children and adults. The Trompo Magico is a museum opened by the Jalisco State government in 2003 on Avenida Central just outside the northwest Periferico. Activities range from carnival games and playgrounds to discovery of ocean fossils, the planets, television and radio broadcast, and scientific concepts such as electricity and gravity.
The museum is open Tuesday to Friday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Saturdays and Sundays from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Their website, also available in English, is trompomagico.jalisco.gob.mx.