’Tis the Season

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Puerto Rico Holiday

Possessing the world’s longest holiday season, a marathon of merriment awaits in Puerto Rico. – By Lanee Lee 

If a fiesta is what visitors seek, Puerto Rico delivers. With more than 30 holidays celebrated annually on an island smaller than Connecticut, Puerto Ricans are dancing and singing nearly every week of the year, but never more so than during the winter months.

In addition to observing the traditional holidays in the U.S., Puerto Rico also has array of local festivities that make its holiday season one of the longest in the world. The celebration begins on Thanksgiving and continues on until Las Octavitas in mid-January.

“The Christmas holidays represent what we hold most dear: faith, family, friendship, the spirit of giving, gratitude and being a community,” says Luis Rivera-Marín, executive director of the Puerto Rico Tourism Co.

Musical Surprises

Worldwide, Christmas is commemorated with family gatherings, traditional meals, religious rituals and festive music. Yet Puerto Rico possesses one of the most unique Christmas traditions of all, called “parrandas or trullas navideñas.”

Similar to an evening-long caroling party, but with an element of surprise, parrandas begin during the Advent season in the beginning of December and continue until Three Kings Day on Jan. 6. The most popular days for caroling are on Christmas Eve and Three Kings Day.

A proper parranda consists of a few friends who gather to “asaltar” (surprise) another friend. Sometime after 10 p.m., they sneak up to the house and on an agreed signal, sing enthusiastically while playing guitars, “panderetas” (tambourines), “guiro” (hollow gourd), maracas and “palitos” (wooden sticks).

In return for being serenaded with “aguinaldos,” traditional Puerto Rican Christmas carols with a six-syllable verse line, the individual being surprised rewards carolers with traditional holiday treats like “turrón” (Spanish nougat) and “coquito” (Puerto Rican eggnog). After the treats are consumed, the caroling will continue with the homeowner joining the trek as the group moves on to another home. The whole process is repeated several times during the night until the early hours of morning.

The homeowner to receive the final parranda serves “asopao de pollo,” a hearty rice and chicken stew. Their voices may be gone from the valiant singing, but participants will part ways with friends and family at dawn with memories of shared laughs, good eats and a cherished experience that can’t be found anywhere else in the world.

The singing continues with “Misa de Aguinaldo”—a Catholic mass conducted almost entirely through music. Every day at dawn for the nine days leading up to Christmas Eve, religious Christmas songs are sung in churches throughout Puerto Rico with the same instruments used in a parranda.

The final Misa de Aquinaldo is the Misa de Gallo, or Rooster’s Mass, held at midnight on Christmas Eve.

A Festive Feast

Some Puerto Ricans have embraced the Western Christmas tradition of decorating a tree and exchanging small gifts on Christmas Day, but a few adamantly continue the age-old traditions. To include Santa Claus is an ongoing question on the island, but none contest celebrating Christmas Eve or Three Kings Day.

An essential element of the Christmas Eve itinerary is a traditional Puerto Rican Christmas feast. Throughout the island, families prepare for weeks, utilizing well-guarded recipes passed down for generations. A typical feast includes “pasteles” (similar to tamales), “lechón” (roasted pork), “arroz con gandules” (rice and pigeon peas) andtembleque” (a custard dessert with coconut, vanilla and cinnamon).

Pasteles are meat pies typically made with pork, root vegetables like yautía or cassava, green bananas, pumpkin and potatoes, and then steamed in banana leaves. They look like small green presents, wrapped with a bow—the ideal Christmas food. It takes roughly five hours from start to finish to make 20 pasteles. Because making them is such a labor of love, it’s an opportunity for families and friends to gather in the kitchen for quality time.

“It [isn’t] quick … but it’s worth it because pasteles are heavenly,” says chef Oswald Rivera, author of the cookbook “Puerto Rican Cuisine in America: Nuyorican and Bodega Recipes.” “The final product is such a joy. To see it at table, unwrap the banana leaves and get that first whiff of meat, vegetables, root plants [and] stuffing—it transports me back to a different and more real time and place.”

Lechón is nearly as work-intensive as pasteles, but Christmas Eve without it is unthinkable for locals. An entire male pig is marinated with “mojo criollo” (a wet rub) made of crushed garlic, olive oil, salt, black pepper, Spanish thyme and citrus juice. It’s then slow-roasted on a stick over an open fire pit for more than six hours. The results are unparalleled: tender meat on the inside, encased in an outer layer of fat and crackling skin.

Through the New Year

The Day of the Innocents, Dec. 28, marks the day King Herod ordered all male children under two years old to be killed in order to rid the world of Jesus, the newborn from Nazareth. Like a mixture of April Fool’s Day and Carnivale de Ponce, in times past, men dressed as Herod’s evil soldiers and went house to house “kidnapping” the first-born boy from every family. In turn, families offered the soldiers gifts and candy to recover their children. The festivities continue in the small village of Hatillo, on Puerto Rico’s northern coast, with the exuberant “Festival de las Mascaras” (Festival of Masks). Participants wear brightly colored, ruffled costumes and create elaborate floats for the parade.

New Year’s Eve is celebrated much like it is in the U.S., but with a local twist: Friends and families head out to a hotel or restaurant to welcome the new year, popping 12 grapes for good luck when the clock strikes midnight. But before the evening party, the day is spent cleaning homes, yards and cars, and repairing anything broken. Locals believe that the condition in which a property enters the new year will be how it remains for the rest of the year.

Rafael Montalvo, marketing director of Bahia Beach Resort & Golf Club, explains why New Year’s Eve is his favorite holiday of the Christmas season.

“In Puerto Rico, New Year’s Eve is a time to reunite with friends and family,” he says. “It’s a time to tell them ‘I love you.’ Everyone has so much joy and hope. Then we go out and dance in the streets all night.”

Holiday Curtain Call

In the U.S., New Year’s Day is the final celebration, but in Puerto Rico the climax is still several days away. “Día de los Reyes” (Three Kings Day) on Jan. 6, more commonly known in Europe as the Epiphany, celebrates the day when the three wise men followed the star in the Western sky to locate the newborn “King of the Jews.”

Nowhere else on the island, or the world for that matter, are the three wise men honored like they are in Juana Diaz, Puerto Rico, known as the city of the three kings. More than 50,000 islanders and international visitors fill the main plaza to welcome the three kings in a parade, where many are dressed as “jibaro” (peasant) shepherds, watch a play depicting the wise men’s visit and partake in an outdoor mass, followed by music and dancing.

The parade is actually a homecoming for the three kings, as they travel throughout the island beginning on Jan. 2, spreading the message of love and peace, says Nelson E. Rivera of Three Kings Museum. Annual auditions are held three months prior in search of locals to play the three wise men.

“We look for the kings to be very religious, devout Catholics and be strong emotionally and psychologically,” Rivera says.

The holiday is dedicated to bringing children joy, beginning the night before. Children set out a box of grass or hay at the foot of their bed for the kings’ camels that supposedly trample through the house for this snack. In the morning, children awake to find the grass eaten and in return, the three kings leave gifts.

Each day of the Three Kings celebration is dedicated to honoring the wise men individually, followed by Octavitas, religiously known as eight days of admiration.

Puerto Rico locals and visitors may not get a white Christmas, but they certainly enjoy a lengthy season full of feasting, singing and island-style good cheer.