Semana Santa

Semana Santa (“Holy Week”) and Easter Sunday have passed. Being unfamiliar with either Catholicism or Mexican culture, I didn’t know what to expect. No Easter bunnies, no fancy hats, no…peeps? Apparently I’m also unfamiliar with Easter in the United States.

I’m told that most families head to the beach if they can afford it. We can’t, so we stayed home and partied it up with the locals. Most of the week our family didn’t do much that was special, but there were a few fun things worth sharing.

I learned that, at least among my in-laws and their neighbors, parents are not allowed to punish or whip their children during this time, from 8:00 Thursday until the morning of Sunday. It seems children run loose in their temporary freedom, not realizing their parents are keeping careful record of all the misdeeds they’ll need punishing for on Sunday.

My in-laws used to fast on Good Friday, but these days fast only until the midday meal, at around 1:00 or 2:00. We ate Capirotada, which is a sweet bread pudding. At the time, I wasn’t aware of it’s religious significance, but Wikipedia has enlightened me.

The basic ingredients carry a rich symbolism to the Passion of Christ, and the dish is viewed by many Mexican and Mexican-American families as a reminder of the suffering of Christ on Good Friday. The bread is for the Body of Christ, the syrup is his blood, the cloves are the nails of the cross, and the whole cinnamon sticks are the wood of the cross. The melted cheese stands for the Holy Shroud.

I can say that it was sweet and tasted pretty good with milk.

After lunch, we went down to the Melecon, the boardwalk that runs along the lake, and joined the rest of the town for an afternoon of beer.

We didn’t do much Saturday or Sunday either, until Sunday night. We went down to the plaza and found the Easter party. A local folkdance group, Son de Mexico, was performing traditional Mexican folkdances. Yes, they did dance around sombreros. There was much kicking and skirt swishing, and the performance was really a lot of fun.

During the final dance, some metal wheels mounted behind the dancers began to spin, shooting off fireworks into the crowd. We had to jump out of the way to avoid the shooting flames, which did ignite an electrical cord and a speaker. No one seemed very surprised or concerned, so as soon as the wheels had spun themselves out, we returned to our original spots to watch the last few minutes of the show.

Also exciting was the explosion of Judas. Paper mache Judas hung suspended near the church (also directly over some vendors and quite near a power line). At the end of the evening, the metal wheels surrounding Judas on four sides began to spin and shoot fireworks into the crowd and across the plaza (yes, this happened more than once during the evening). It turns out that fireworks are far more exciting when they’re chasing you than when they’re in the sky. After the wheels had finished spinning, there were two large explosions and Judas exploded into confetti, among the cheering and screaming crowd.

So that was our Semana Santa: beer, capirotada, roving fireworks. Not bad.