January 6th is something of a holiday here. It's the Catholic Feast of Epiphany which is also know as Three Kings Day. Traditionally, it is celebrated as the day the Three Kings visited the Baby Jesus in Bethlehem and was the day that the Mexican children would leave their shoes outside to receive gifts. I'm not sure if they still do, because they all celebrate Santa here these days. It's also the last official day of the 12 days of Christmas.
Anyway, one thing that is done and is a lot of fun is serving a traditional Rosca de Reyes or Crown of the Kings cake. It's a rich yeast bread shaped like a large crown and is adorned with "jewels" of candied fruit. The really fun thing is that there is a ceramic or plastic Baby Jesus baked inside and the person who is "lucky" enough to get that piece is obliged to throw a party on February 2nd, which is Candelmas. I still haven't figured out why!
So, yesterday, being Wednesday, the day of our weekly water volleyball game in the small pool outside our house, some of us decided to get a rosca cake. I went to Mega in the morning to buy one and that alone was an experience. Holy Cow. The supermarket was jammed, every checkout with longer lines than I have ever seen- and every Mexican had a huge rosca cake in their cart. They came in three sizes but I only bought a medium. The bakery had almost nothing else for sale-just humongous stacks of rosca cakes!
After the games we cut the cake. I didn't realize that there was also a Mary and Joseph inside. I got Mary pretty quickly, then Tony got Joseph and FINALLY Ann got Baby Jesus-the second last piece cut! It was way more fun than finding him right away. So Sad. No one wanted the baby!!!!
Now, just to be fair, we've decided to have a joint charcoal BBQ burger evening at the small palapa on February 2. It will also be a pot luck because we really have no idea how many will come. Should be fun though!
1 comment:
Volleyball, eh! Need a coach???
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