TLALPUJAHUA, MEXICO: In the land of the forever Christmas, there are no elves, no reindeer and no snow. And the creepy wooden Santa that sits outside one of the stores here confronts shoppers with a gigantic beard and not an ounce of cheer.This small village, embedded in the lush mountains of Michoacán, is no North Pole. Yet it celebrates Christmas every day of the year all the same, as a production center of handmade ornaments for the Mexican, U.S. and Canadian markets.
Despite the absence of a traditional Christmas setting, Tlalpujahua, a former mining town, does not lack for charm. The narrow cobblestone streets sweep up sharp slopes to an airy plaza, where a 300-year-old church with a pink bell tower dominates the tiled rooftops and the surrounding landscape. Stores are tiny and tidy, stacked side by side, and the village's entrance is graced with a giant Christmas tree that stays up all year.
Tourists come from across Mexico and the world to shop and get a firsthand look at the craftsmanship, which renders everything from traditional Christmas balls to trumpets, candy canes and pieces of fruit. Ornaments are hand-painted by a second group of workers, whose exacting work gives the decorations the appearance of being machine-made.Craftsmen and women sit at small tables with torches, molding pieces of glass tubing with a delicate blend of glass blowing and gentle twists. The average ornament takes just a few minutes for skilled artisans, though complicated ones can take as long as 15.
The ornaments delight the eye with their rich colors and shapes, hanging from ceilings, dangling off trees and piled in baskets, as if harvested from orchards of colored glass.
Though high season is October to December, production takes place year-round, as it has to some extent for the last 50 years, work that keeps the local economy going and employs more than 250 families. The village's one major factory, Fimave, said it shipped close to 50 million ornaments out of the country this year.
"Before we used to have to look for customers," said one of the owners of Fimave. "Now the people come on their own to buy goods." She declined to give her name because, she said, she did not want too much attention.
Her reticence is understandable in the context of life in the rest of the state of Michoacán, where drug violence, kidnappings, extortion and poverty are a more defining characteristic than Christmas cheer.
Not so long ago, officials and local people say, criminals extorted payments from the ornament producers. While no longer the case, especially since the uptick in tourism of recent years has bought more attention and police to the town, fears from that time linger for older members of the community. But those fears are seldom discussed, locals say.
The town, after all, has survived worse. Established in the 1460s, Tlalpujahua fell from indigenous hands to the Spanish conquistadores, who transformed it into a mining town. Mining remained its lifeblood until 1937, when a landslide destroyed the majority of the town, leaving it without an economy.
But in the mid-1960s, a villager named Joaquín Muñoz Orta, who had traveled to the United States and discovered the art of making ornaments, returned home and set up shop. Though his operation, which at one point employed about 1,000 people and was said to be the largest in Latin America, did not survive, the culture did.
What emerged eventually shielded the village from the violence and notoriety of the rest of Michoacán, turning it into a sort of holiday Brigadoon.
Most residents are deeply grateful for a viable industry that not only creates jobs but also attracts tourists, and whose products adorn trees in faraway places.
Gerardo Martínez Chavarría, a former doctor who owns a workshop here called Saint Dumont and who has been in the business for 40 years, said the way of life also kept families together. Like many of the artisans here, his employees do their work at home, where they can put in the hours they want and still watch their children, tend to their chickens and fix meals.
"It's amazing," Martínez yelled excitably while giving a tour of his store, showing off glass teddy bears, snowmen and fruit. "It's the secret to success."
The village seems quite unified in its embrace of an economy built on one day a year. Workshops with names like White Christmas, Christmas Milar and the House of Santa open their doors to passers-by, and the village puts on a three-month fair every year, which is billed as the definitive Christmas decoration shopping experience.
It also helps that the town was named one of Mexico's so-called Pueblos Mágicos in 2005, part of a marketing campaign to rebrand certain small towns around the country as destinations for those looking to experience Mexico's colonial charm.
Since then, the production and popularity of the ornaments have steadily increased. Though not the most exacting with numbers, local tourism officials (there are two) say that production has increased nearly 30 percent this year from 2014.
And the number of artisans who dedicate themselves to the craft has increased. From 200 families or small artisan groups making the ornaments last year, there are now more than 250. New workers arrive from elsewhere and find work at a shop, and many then go into business for themselves within a few years. New shops are popping up all the time to meet the demand.
What Tlalpujahua lacks, however, is more than one large-scale manufacturing facility to capitalize on the number of workers.
The closest thing is Fimave, which employs about 50 people and says that it churns out as many as 50 million ornaments a year, about 90 percent of which go to the United States.
Why Tlalpujahua does not have more factories connecting with clients in other countries is a study in Mexico's informal economy and the deterrence of bureaucracy. For the most part, rather than deal with the taxes, salaries and oversight required of a company, most artisans would rather stay small.
"I could go bigger, but clients are hard to find and the hassle isn't really all that worth it," said Luis Alberto Vidal, who works with his brothers and their families in his own little craft shop. "For now, it's mostly local customers and tourists."
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