Celebrating the coming of the 3 Wisemen

I have mentioned it before but for those of you who don´t know, Spain celebrates its big gift-giving day on January 6th when the 3 Wisemen (or Kings, or Reyes Magos) come to visit households on the same day as the Epiphany (when the Bible says they finally reached the baby Jesus). Here children write letters to the Wisemen asking for gifts, much like we do for Santa. I still think Santa is way better and nothing is going to change my mind. That being said, Jose and I went to his hometown´s parade on the 5th and watched as the Kings passed by on floats while throwing candy and small gifts to the people. It is exciting, just like seeing Santa at the end of a parade of lights back home. We ended up with some stuffed animals (for Cooper) and some plastic balls (again for Cooper). Jose claims that before the parade yielded much better gifts but that with the financial crisis things have been cut back. Now mostly they throw candy. In any case, it is a fun and very cultural experience. I even weaseled my way into getting a picture with Melchor, or was he Gaspar?? I didn´t know that the 3 Wisemen had names but apparently they do.



The morning of the 6th we opened presents with Jose´s family. His sister was in town from Paris and we had a good time exchanging things like clothes and books. It is also tradition to eat a special cake that has both a little figure of a king and a bean baked into it.



Whoever gets the piece with the king is the winner, this year it was Jose.Whoever gets the piece with the bean has to buy the cake next year. That ended up being me.



Overall it was a nice way to end the long holiday season here in Spain. Hopefully next year a tall (for a Spaniard) 14 year-old boy doesn´t stand right in front of me as the parade passes by so I can´t grab for more things being thrown. This year we really had to fight for the few things we got. Next year I will be more prepared. And I am throwing elbows.

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