Tuesday, November 03, 2009

We learn something every day

As part of our lesson yesterday, we met up with the Spanish ladies from the other adult classes for a chat.

We were discussing Halloween and explaining the customs associated with this fiesta in England. The Spanish ladies then went on to tell us about el Dia de Todos los Santos (All Saints Day). One of the ladies put it quite succinctly; you go to the cemetery and clean up the niches, then you take flowers and light candles on All Saints Day. Once you have finished paying respect to your loved ones, you return home and eat. That is it in a nutshell.

One of the other ladies then told us about another custom which is now out of fashion but would have been followed many years ago. Apparently people would give up their bed for the night and sleep on the floor so that their loved ones could visit them and have somewhere comfortable to lie. It is easy to understand why people gave up on that tradition.

Speaking of Halloween, it seems that some of our neighbours hadn’t prepared themselves for the trick or treaters and suffered the consequences. As tradition would have it, If you don’t have sweets to give to the children who visit you, they will play a trick on you. The favoured trick here in Bigasto is to throw eggs outside your house – not nice but it could be worse. As one of our classmates said, next year he will go to Eroski and stock up on a big bag of sweets!

I don't think he thought the yolk was funny (for the benefit of my Spanish readers the words yolk and joke in English ryhme).

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