Today is Epiphany, the 12th day of Christmas, the day that the wise men arrived bringing gifts for baby Jesus. It has been unseasonably cold here, with rumors that we actually hit freezing for the first time since the 1980s, also rumors of snow in Catalonia, neither of which I can confirm, so I’ve been mostly indoors researching Christmas customs in Spain, with a few epiphanies of my own.
The next public party in Spain after New Year’s turns out to be Epiphany. Most of the children here don’t get presents from Santa Claus, they get them from Melchior, Gaspar, and Balthazar, who sail into the port of Barcelona on Epiphany eve and are greeted by the mayor, who gives them the magic key to the city so they can leave presents for all the children here. Their Majesties then participate in the magical and colorful Parade of the Three Kings.
We braved the cold to see it. This time, planning was involved, and we secured a spot 3 or 4 persons from the street with time to spare. The parade took 45 minutes to pass our location and was an explosion of color, music, and dance featuring hundreds of performers, many of them children, plus municipal workers showcasing city services, with I can’t imagine how many choreographers, artists, composers, designers, and planners behind the scenes.
Most of the time we didn’t know what we were watching. There was many interesting characters and several performers reading text, and I imagine they are to Spain just as the Grinch, Rudolph, Frosty, Scrooge, The Night Before Christmas, or The Polar Express might be in the US. But we just don’t know. This for instance: Star of Wonder or scifi cosplay?
Each king, Melchior of the white beard, Gaspar of the brown beard, and beardless Balthazar, had his own float and entourage. Melchior and his entourage look like a medieval court; Gaspar’s group had Arabian-themed costumes and music and included a bicycle dance, though not in this video; and Balthazar’s was similar except with African themes, and included 3-meter-tall animal puppets commissioned for this event as well as the best music of the night.
The post office had a large showing, including rolling mail receptacles and baskets held up to balconies in which children could deposit last-minute letters. Many of them were walking on stilts, which is not a requirement for postal workers in the US to my knowledge, and my sister is one. Stilts were quite common in the parade, so there must be a large pool of stilt-trained residents.
The Pacifiers float collected pacifiers from children who have outgrown them. We did not get a picture of that one, but here are a few others. Sorry there are so many links, but links are easier to send, and the photographer, a close relative, couldn’t resist capturing this dynamic parade mostly on video. Here are, possibly:
- Middle Easterns dancers with light swords,
- Sample Narrator,
- Tractor Dancers,
- Pencil, Die, Ball, and Bear,
- Celebration of Harps, and
- Plush Giants.
Naughty Spanish children might receive gifts of coal, and the coal crowd was disturbingly large, though refreshingly rowdy. Happily it was followed by the candy guns, literally shooting candy into the air above the crowd, similar to the way minor league baseball teams in the US distribute caps, though much faster and at closer range. We ended up all singing a Catalan song with an easy chorus, Nadal! Nadal!.
Since the Kings won’t be visiting us, this marked for us the end of our First Christmas in Spain. It started for us on Nov. 22 when the lights of Barcelona were lit. Officially, though, it starts on Dec. 8, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, when households put up decorations and competitively realistic nativity scenes.
Christmas Eve is the most lavish meal of the season, sparing no expense, featuring a meat-based broth, the meat used to create the broth, eel and lobster tapas, and almond-based desserts. After dinner they may go visit friends and together drink cava and sing carols accompanied by percussion instruments. Some attend the Rooster’s Mass at midnight.
On Christmas Day families feast on roast turkey, more tapas, and possibly seafood stew. A few also receive gifts from Santa Claus that morning.
On Dec. 26, the Feast of San Esteban, In Catalonia only, they take leftover meat from the previous two days and roll it inside pasta. Notice that this is the third feast day in a row. The next day they take a short break. Then on Dec. 28, the Feast of Los Santos Inocentes, they play practical jokes! Traditionally one puts a silouhette on someone’s back without them noticing, but all pranks are welcome, and as in the US on April 1st, some newspapers also publish spoofs.
On New Year’s Eve they eat lentils, each one of which represents a coin, to bring wealth in the new year, at a large family dinner earlier in the evening. If they don’t go to fireworks, they watch the main square in Madrid on TV. As the clock peals midnight, they attempt to eat a grape at each peal, a competitive and nearly impossible task that all enjoy though few achieve. Everyone has a preferred technique. They drink cava at midnight and then go out to bars. It is a tradition to wear red underwear.
On Jan. 5 there is the parade, and that night the children leave shoes in which their presents will be put as well as food for the Kings and water for their camels. Jan. 6 is the day most kids get up early and drag their parents out of bed to check out their presents. Afterwards there is–wait for it–a large meal, followed by a ring shaped cake into which is baked the figure of a king and a dry green bean. The person who gets the figurine wears a crown the rest of the day and is treated as a king. The person who gets the bean pays for the lunch and/or cake.
On Jan. 7 the children return to school.
Meanwhile, we do have a personal connection to Epiphany: Today is our 36th wedding anniversary! We have a feast of our own planned, with someone else doing the cooking.