I am not a huge fan of the holidays. Particularly Catholic ones. In fact, due to my upbringing, the latter bring up a mild version of PTSD. Particularly, as I mentioned here before, those in Florida where you run into elderly but aggressively "friendly" Tea Party zealots who greet you at Target or Wal-Mart with a barrage of "MERRY CHRISTMAS" in response to the liberal ecumenical neutral milquetoast p.c. "happy holidays." (which however, may be of offense to atheists or agnostics such as myself) My earlier post on Christmas in the Bible Belt here:
http://petitemaoiste.blogspot.com/2008/12/merry-christmas.html
There is one holiday custom that is making me reconsider going back to observing the tradition of displaying figurines depicting the scene at the manger with the Holy Family, Three Kings, animals etc. One of my grandfather's sisters (borderline Opus Dei but that is neither here nor there) is very artistic and used to organize a massive creche in her garage in Florida, with the mountainous Holy Land setting made of some kind of cardboard, spray paint, glitter etc. lights, and ceramic figures made by her. The gringos driving past would stop in astonishment (well except for the Italians I guess). In Catalonia, they populate the traditional scene of Christ after his birth with little figures called caganers or shitters to use the vernacular. The best part is that these crappers are usually just local peasants or whatever but at some point they began to make them in the guise of the rich and famous in a typically Spanish irreverent/politically incorrect/subversive/blasphemous manner. Love!
See a little summary in English here
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