Felices Fiestas: Christmas, New Year's, and Three Kings

Christmas:

Christmas is the start of the holiday season There's a family dinner Christmas Eve of rabbit or fish, depending on where you're from. Our dinner also included dancing to such Christmas classics as "I Like to Move It, Move It," "I Saw the Sign" by Ace of Base, and that famous religious work "The Macarena."

On Christmas proper, we opened a few gifts and went to church where Ruyman gave a talk about - what else? - man's duty to God. The rest of the day was spent getting ready for or participating in Carmen's birthday party. (Apparently, the drunken uncle tasked with reporting Carmen's birth kept forgetting both the date she was born and the fact that he had already filled out a birth certificate. As a result, Carmen has three birthdays on record, ranging from October to Christmas. One would think that asking Abuela would solve the matter, but she wasn't exactly a teetotaler at that time, either. Carmen chose December 25 for simplicity's sake.)

When the party died down, Ruyman and I went with Carmen and some friends to an open-air concert near the waterfront. The symphony played mostly opera selections, with a few Christmas songs thrown in for color. During "White Christmas," for example, the ushers passed out thousands of white sparklers. Unfortunately, we didn't get any but it was still a cool effect.

New Year's Eve:


When I was single, I was a little on the superstitious side. I wished on stars and dandelions and empty straw wrappers. As one of the last in the group without a spouse, I figured I could use all the help I could get. Even at my worst, though, nothing quite prepared me for the good luck rituals associated with New Year's Eve in Spain.

There's a superstition for everything. If you want to improve your love life during the year, wear red underwear on New Year's Eve. If you want to travel, put your luggage near the door at dinner. If you want money, stick a Euro in your sock or drink champagne out of a glass with gold in the bottom. If you want to beef up your intellect, sit on a book. Finally, if you want good luck throughout the year, at each stroke of midnight, eat one grape. Considering the grapes have seeds the size of cloves, the intervals between bells are very short, and, above all, most people are pretty sloshed by midnight, it's a real New Year's miracle more people don't choke to death.

Three Kings:


The Festival of Three Kings on Jan. 6th is a huge deal here. After finding myself in the middle of so many unknown New Year's traditions, I asked my adult students what to expect for Three Kings. There was a lot to take in. First, the day before Three Kings is a day of parades, pageantry, and frantic last-minute shopping. The pageant was first and featured SpongeBob Squarepants and friends, a modern-dance version of Little Red Riding Hood in which the Wolf accidentally ripped his pants off Chippendale-style (sorry folks, no pictures of that), and of course, the appearance of Melchor, Gaspar, and Balthazar, the Three Magical Kings.

Red Riding Hood with assorted dancing foliage.

Balthazar

Gaspar

Melchor 

After the festivities in the soccer stadium, the whole city took to the streets to wait for the parade, which started at dark. It took a long time for the parade to get to us and in the meantime, I gradually began to hate everyone around me as they popped, punctured, and pummeled my space bubble.  I was run over by strollers, wheelchairs, and several large bags of gifts. A woman behind me wrapped both arms around my neck during most of the parade so she could get better pictures. One angry (and buff) grandmother literally picked me up by the armpits to move me out of her way.

Along with lesser jostling, there was an endless halo of smoke from various chain smokers in the crowd. (I've decided that if people want to smoke around children and nonsmokers, they should light their own nose hairs on fire and limit the suffering to just themselves.) It took me six hours for my fight or flight response to shut down enough to let Ruyman hug me. But the parade has some pretty cool stuff.

Float

Lots of horses 

Gaspar

Gold 

Shepherds

Gaspar the Camera Shy

Frankensense

Yes, that's a real camel.

Coal

Balthazar's back up dancers

Letters to the kings

Not quite sure what

Roman Soldiers

Herod

Real churros are circular and don't have sugar on them.

After the parade, we got our picture taken and ate churros and chocolate, which are also parts of Three Kings tradition. 

Then we wandered through the bazaars set up on the streets, trying to finish any last-minute shopping. We finally finished wrapping gifts, setting out shoes under the tree, putting out food for the kings and water for the camels, and placing the letters to the kings in the tree at 4 AM.

The next morning, Ashley mercifully slept in until 11 AM so we got a miraculous seven hours of sleep before she came bounding out asking for presents. We opened them, and then Ruyman went back to sleep for the rest of the day. 

Carmen's new "panties" 

A Hello Kitty knockoff

Cash: the gift that keeps on giving

Ruyman's new thong, compliments of Carmen. There are so many jokes I could make right now, but my mother reads this blog. Make up your own.

Sporting my first-ever Spanish fashion scarf and some serious bed head. 

While we were asleep, the rest of the family had the traditional torta, a circular cake topped with fruit and containing a small toy and a bean. Whoever gets the toy in their slice is king for the day and whoever gets the bean has to pay for the cake next year.