Holidays in Spain are very different from holidays in Vermont. For example, instead of Santa Claus, the Three Kings come and those are even on different days! Santa Claus comes on December 25th and the Three Kings come on January 6th. You might have heard that the Three Kings Parade is long, but you have no idea how long it is. It takes like 2 hrs and the floats are huge. And, get a load of this, the Three Kings don't come until past the halfway point and they have the biggest of the big floats. At the beginning the parade it was okay because it had pretty floats, but then there was this float that came that have stuffies and kids on it, and the float froze in front of us for like a million years and then everything got boring. |
Another Christmas tradition in Catalunya is Caga Tío. Next to this paragraph is a picture of our Caga Tío. Caga Tío is a magic trunk whose name means "Shit Log" in Catalan. How it works is you feed him nice treats and you cover him with a blanket so his doesn't get cold for all of December until Christmas Eve. On Christmas Eve you take out some sticks and you hit him as you say a poem, and then you leave the room for like 10 minutes and when you come back in he's pooped out some presents for you! In our school, in Catalan class, my class got a Caga Tío and everybody got one day to feed the Tío. Would you believe it? Me and my best friend Layne got to feed him on the same day! School wasn't the only place where I got a Caga Tío. I also got one at home. Caga Tío gave us Simpsons mini figures and markers on Christmas Eve. Oh yeah! And he also gave us a notebook. |
Now comes the really gross poopy part. Its not about Caga Tío, its about Caganeros. In case you're wondering what Caganero means, it means "shitter". They are called that because they are figures of shepherds who are pooping and if you look at their backside you will see that they have a bare behind. You buy them and put them in your nativity scene. They make different kinds of Caganeros now. They make Parc Güell lizards, politicians, Iron Man, Gandolf, Golum, Yoda and Bart. Bart has yellow poop and Yoda has green poop.
We saw all these Caganeros at a Christmas market, but there was lots of other stuff for your Nativity Scene there too. In Spain, they mostly have the whole town of Bethlehem in their Nativity Scene. You can buy new items for your nativity scene every year. They have a pan of paella, lots of animals like sheep and kitty cats and dogs (I got a cartoony camel), shepherds, multiple houses, bridges, rivers ¡y mucho más! They even had mousetraps to keep baby Jesus safe from mice! In our advent calendar we won most of our nativity scene but we picked the things out at the market. |