Christmas in El Paso | 2022

Christmas in El Paso | 2022

Introduction

Hi, welcome to Living in El Paso, Texas. In this episode, we're going to talk about what's going on in El Paso for Christmas 2022. Thank you so much for checking out the channel. My name is John Peña with Peña El Paso Realty Group. If you're looking to buy or sell a home, please consider reaching out to us, as we pride ourselves on being the best at what we do.

One of the things we do here is talk about El Paso. My goal from the start has always been to be honest and talk about what this city has going for it, and sometimes what it doesn't have going for it. I think this episode will include a little bit of both.

Christmas Downtown

Let's talk about what El Paso does have going for it during Christmas time, and that is downtown at San Jacinto Plaza. We've got a 55 foot Christmas tree and 400,000 mini lights at night. This place is beautiful. It's all lit up. They'll have music down here, all sorts of activities. So it's a great place to bring the family and get into that Christmas spirit, even though there's no snow on the ground, right?

Another option for you downtown is this: we actually have a little ice skating rink that pops up mid-November through December. So you can bring the kids, get them on the ice skating rink, which is a total thrill if kids have never been on snow or ice. We've got that here, and again, music, drinks, food trucks, all sorts of things like that. So that's a great little event.

The streetcars are having an event where you can hop on the streetcar, and there are Christmas stories being told and all sorts of stuff. So there's a lot of fun events. I was actually showing a house the other day, and one little neighborhood was having some big outdoor Christmas festival thing that sounded like it was hopping. So Christmas in El Paso is pretty awesome.

A Sobering Update

I'm sure in your city there's tons of great things to do, and that is certainly the case in El Paso. However, if you've been watching the news, you've probably noticed that El Paso has been making the news, because what's been happening over the last couple of days is we've been getting a pretty strong influx of migrants crossing over from Juárez into El Paso.

And the reason for that, of course, is that there are tons of people in other countries who are fleeing those countries for various reasons, and El Paso is amongst other border towns. But El Paso does happen to be a city right now that's seeing a pretty big influx. Normally we have the resources, shelters, all of that type of federal infrastructure to handle that type of processing of migrants. Typically El Paso is not their destination. They end up on a bus going to wherever it is they're going. Sometimes they end up being turned back, depending on what laws are in place. But what's happening right now is that such a high number of individuals are making that border crossing that our shelters are getting a little bit overwhelmed. They don't have the capacity to house all of these folks.

I'm wearing this big jacket right now. Normally it doesn't get too cold, but right now we're in a bit of a cold front, so at night our temperatures are starting to get down to 30 degrees or so. So a lot of unfortunate folks are finding themselves sleeping on the streets, trying to stay warm.

It strikes us all the time, because we're trying to be as compassionate and loving to everybody as we possibly can be. It strikes us a little bit more at the heart right now, because during the holiday season, typically that's when everybody's in a more caring and loving mood anyway. It's tough for us to see these poor folks struggling. And no matter what your political views are, people are people. So we are dealing with that kind of crisis right now.

What we're not dealing with is being overrun by migrant people who are causing trouble. That's not happening here. As you can see, we're downtown and the city is still very quiet. But what we are dealing with, like I said, is a current influx of migrants, and we're hopeful that all of that will work out as well as it can for everybody.

Closing

So just a little bit of an update during the holidays. Here on the channel, we're always pretty serious about our different topics, but during the holidays we like to lighten it up a little bit. So hopefully we can provide you guys with some nice B-roll of what the city looks like during Christmas.

Of course, if you have any questions about El Paso, we would love to answer them for you. You can reach us at the contact information on the screen. We hope that you and your family are having a fantastic Christmas, a great New Year's, and we'll see you in the next episode.