Today
I'm gonna talk about festivities and the differences between Italy
and Spain about them.
The first
one I'm going to talk about is Christmas, you may think it's the same
all over the world, anxious children waiting for their gifts on
Christmas Eve, someone get them on the 24th, someone(like
in Italy) on the 25th, but it's not always true, let's see
why.
In
Italy we have “Babbo Natale” (Santa Claus) who carries the
presents, well, actually I discovered some years ago that it's not
true! It was all a big lie set up by my parents, so traumatic :(
Well,
let's go back to Babbo Natale, you write a letter to him with all
your wishes and send it to the North Pole, hoping that you've been
good enough to receive those things, and if you have, he takes big
gifts at your house, he parks on your roof his sledge guided by flying reindeers, in order to get in passing through your chimney.
 |
| Santa Claus with his flying sledge |
Almost
two weeks later, on January the 6th,
more joy for the little children, 'cause “La
Befana” is coming!
Yes!Because on
Epiphany Eve an old, evil, poor, naughty witch, called Befana, will
come to your house riding a flying broom( yes like Harry Potter in
“Quidditch” ), taking candies to the good children and pieces of
coal(actually made out of black colored sugar!) to the bad ones. Those
candies come in a big sock ("La calza della befana") and
then children spend all the day trying to increase their diabetes
eating as much as they can! Glorious childhood!
 |
| La befana |
In
Spain is more or less the opposite, on Christmas day children will
get candies or some small gift, depending on family traditions, but
on the 6th of January they will get the main
prize!
But
as you may have guessed, it's not Santa Claus who do this, and not
even the Befana, so who?!
The
answer is “The three Kings/Wise Men”, in Spain they're called
“Los Reyes”.
Los
Reyes do the same as Babbo Natale does, they deliver you gifts, but
of course you must have been a good boy/girl, and have written the
letter with your wishes.
 |
| Los Reyes |
Well,
this is all I had to say about Christmas, but staying in December,
there's another difference.
I
don't know why, but what everyone calls “April fools' day” (in
Italy “Pesce d'Aprile”) which is on April the 1st
, in Spain is in December, exactly on 28th
and it is called “Día
de los inocentes”, the essence is the same, people making fool out
of someone else, just they are on different days!
Let
me know if you know other differences of this kind, or maybe about
something else, Byee!!! :)
No comments:
Post a Comment