Playing with Fire: Have a Very Serious Christmas! - Gonzalo Frasca
I never really understood this whole “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” thing. I’m not a Christian -actually I’m not religious at all- but there is no way that I’ll ever be offended by a holiday that provides free presents and good food! I am a big, big fan of Christmas. And I seriously hope that my unconditional support for all things Christmas may lead a Nintendo Wii under my tree this year (fingers crossed). In addition to the presents, there is something else that I like about Christmas: games. All around the world, Christmas is the time for all sorts of traditional games and play activities. Many of these games can definitively be described as serious, particularly to children, because they generally provide a much more tangible outcome than simply fun. If you think about it, nothing is more serious for a kid than toys, candy and pocket money. And that is what the games that I will describe involve -in the form of begging, bribing and, well, virtual poop. My home country is Uruguay, in South America. I live in Denmark, Scandinavia. This year, I plan to spend Christmas in Barcelona, Spain. So, I decided to share with you some of the strange, mysterious and just plain creepy -but definitively serious- Christmas games played by kids in these three countries. One coin for Judas Uruguay is a tiny country with 3.5 million people. Most of them come from immigrant families who arrived during the 19th and 20th centuries, mainly from Spain and Italy. This fact made Uruguayan Christmas quite problematic. The thing is that immigrants were used to having chilly weather during the holidays in their home countries, so they brought their traditionally fat and heavy holiday menus. Sadly, that kind of food is not very compatible with the fact that Christmas takes place during Summer in the Southern Hemisphere. So, everybody’s livers suffer extensively while we stuff ourselves with food designed to cope with harsh European winters. However, immigrants brought more than food in their luggage. They also introduced the Spanish tradition of burning an image of Judas Iscariot -the disciple who betrayed Jesus-, which remains popular in some places in South America, either during Christmas or Easter weeks. This activity is called the “The Burning of the Judas”. This “Judas” is a human-size ragdoll that will be later hanged from a tree and burned down. Generally, it is made with old clothes stuffed with dry grass or newspapers. In order to make the burning more interesting, firecrackers are hosted inside it. Even though it is meant to represent Judas, it is not unheard of to build it with the faces of some unpopular characters such as politicians. While the burning is the grand finale, the most exciting part takes place for a couple of weeks, where children sit on the sidewalks along with their Judases and beg for money. In Spanish, the litany goes “Una moneda pa’l Judas?” which means “Can I have a coin for Judas?” The phrase probably is connected to the fact that Judas betrayed Jesus for thirty coins. In the early days, nobody would have thought about using the money in nothing else but firecrackers, so the whole neighborhood could enjoy the burning. However, it is likely that a big part of current Uruguayan Judases are never burnt. Instead, kids keep the money as pocket change -which may be still spent in firecrackers, since fireworks here are a popular way to celebrate the holidays. Sadly, it is now not uncommon to also see street children who use the Judas as an excuse for real begging.
|
