Christmas Blogging: Spanish Christmas 2

As a continuation of our series of Christmas blogging, I would like to tell you about Spanish Christmas today.

In Spain, the traditional ornament of the season is the “Nacimiento” or “Belén” , which represents Nativity scenes with figures made of clay, plaster or wood. Normally every house has one and they differ a lot: from simple scenes with the Virgin , St Joseph and the child (such as the one on the right, painted by my mom) to really elaborated ones representing the whole town of Bethlehem.
The biggest ones normally belong to churches or town halls.

And there is a funny tradition for the biggest ones: a small figure of the “Caganer” represents a man literally “going to the toilet”. This colourful character is often difficult to spot. He is usually to be found in an ”outlying” area - behind a suitably placed bush, for example - and not actually centre stage with the infant Jesus himself! This popular tradition comes from Catalonia and young children often spend quite a long time trying to find it.

Even though we are losing more and more our own traditions and adopting the Christmas trees and other northern ones, the Nativity scenes are still a central part of our Christmas culture. So … Feliz Navidad a todos!

Posted by la prima julia in Culture, General | Trackback |