Today is Three Kings Day, also known as Epiphany and Twelfth Night. Today celebrates the day when the Bible says the the three kings/wisemen/magi arrived in Bethlehem with gifts for the baby Jesus.
In many Puerto Rican households today is a bigger day than Christmas Day itself. Last night churches were crowded, more so even than on Christmas Eve as many churches here don't have Christmas Eve services. Today is a day for exchanging gifts. In many households Christmas Day brings small gifts while larger gifts are reserved for Three Kings Day.
Three Kings Eve has a tradition that echos stockings hung on the fireplace mantle and leaving cookies and milk for Santa: before they go to bed on Three Kings Eve, Puerto Rican children put hay or grass in their shoes and slide them under their beds. The hay is to feed the Kings' camels. In the morning the children wake up to find the hay gone (presumably eaten by the camels) and sweets or presents in their shoes. (Hey - camels in Puerto Rico is no weirder than flying reindeer in, say, Arizona.)
It's hard to describe "typical" when it come to PR Christmas. There are so many "northern" traditions that have been introduced here, most of them terribly incongruous. For example, we have an inflatable snowman sitting in a chair in front of Ola Lola's. There are strings of snowflake lights in people's yards. Most of the people have only seen snow in pictures. There are wreaths on doors and buildings. Some places - mostly Walmart/Sam's/Amigo - sell cut Christmas trees shipped by container ship from Oregon and Washington. I think that's just weird. Images of Santa in a red suit trimmed in fur are pretty strange when it's 80+ degrees.
I have heard some older Puerto Ricans bemoaning the loss of local traditions. Many of them blame the change on the government's crackdown on drunk driving over the holidays. "Family parties aren't as big as the used to be" according to one old timer (although it's hard to imagine how big they must have been in the past given some I've been to and seen).
The other tradition that has suffered is the paranda. A paranda is like caroling on steroids. You get together a bunch of your friends, at least one of which is really a musician, and go to another friend's house at, say, 2:00 a.m. You sing, you play music, you bang on drums or kitchen pots or plastic buckets. In return for this joyful awakening your host friend is obligated to provide food and drink (preferably coquito made with pitoro, the local "moonshine") for the entire paranda band. After feeding you, your host joins the paranda and you move on to the next victim's, er, friend's house. This continues until daybreak or until everyone is passed out in someone's yard. You can see where a few DUI's would put a damper on this tradition.
However, according to Fox News Latino (always a reliable source), Puerto Rico does have the longest Christmas season in the world. They do have couple of things wrong though. Christmas does not start at Thanksgiving. It starts at Halloween which is really just there to remind people that the Christmas season has officially started. (Halloween is not a huge holiday here, but it's growing.) Thanksgiving is just another part of Christmas, the first BIG family party of the season. The big box stores, particularly Walmart and Kmart, have two seasons, summer and Christmas. Each store has a section dedicated to "seasonal." About the third week of September they take out all the summer lawn-and-garden stuff and put in aisle after aisle of Christmas. Then, about the end of January, they take out what's left of picked-over Christmas stuff and put the lawn-and-garden stuff back in.
On a somewhat more serious note, I do take issue with the Fox report's emphasis on depression and suicide here during the Christmas season. Not that it's not true; it is. But no more so here than anywhere else. The holidays are a time of increased depression and suicide EVERYWHERE, not just in Puerto Rico.
So be HAPPY this season!
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