Bearing gifts we traverse afar.
Field and fountain, moor and mountain,
Following yonder star.
O star of wonder, star of night,
Star with royal beauty bright,
Westward leading, still proceeding,
Guide us to thy perfect Light.
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There are some traditions that just make so much sense. Dia de los Reyes, or Three Kings Day, is one of those traditions. Honestly, it makes more sense than Christmas. In many cultures, Three Kings Day is celebrated similarly to Christmas in the US -- exchange of presents, a big meal and lots of family time. And now that we think about it - that is honestly more logical than what we do.
Think about it - Christmas Day - Jesus gets borned. Mary's tired, they're chilling in the manger, they've been walking for days. So... PRESENTS!! Wait, what? Then we have Three Kings Day - a day honoring the Three Wisemen who visited the first family of Christianity to offer gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrrrrrrh. Why the heck don't we give gifts on that day instead? It makes so much more sense!
I agree, Albert Einstein. I agree.
Unfortunately, despite our infallible and passionately argued logic, we could not convince my parents to buy an entire new set of presents for us to give us for Dia de los Reyes. In the spirit of Christian forgiveness, I will not hold their wholly unreasonable position of refusing to double our Christmas bounty against them.
In all seriousness, we didn't realize it was a gift giving holiday until last night so we actually just chalked that part of the holiday up as a loss. Like many international Christmas-related holidays, Dia de los Reyes has the shoes-outside-the-door-for-presents tradition, which we did not observe. The rest of the traditions that we found revolve around food and decorations. We focused on the food because YUM.
I found a great article listing 7 recipes for celebrating Dia de los Reyes. Among them were fritters shaped like stars, various forms of hot cocoa and the Rosca de Reyes. We had precisely NONE of the ingredients necessary for those recipes, thanks to snowpocalypse. So, we modified two of the three of them. Instead of fritters, we made star shaped sugar cookies.
Well. Kind of star shaped.
I love the symbolism we found in this holiday. When you look at Christmas, as Americans celebrate it, much of the original meaning has been eclipsed by consumerism and/or the adaptation of pagan traditions. That's not a righteous rant - just an observation. By contrast, there is a direct reasoning behind the star shaped cookies -- the three wisemen followed the North Star to guide them to the baby Jesus. I love it.
Random Christian "aww" moment - Sydney was making the cookies with us and asked if she could use a different shape for some of the cookies. The shape she chose?
Fishes. I heart accidental symbolism.
The other tradition we took on was a modified version of the Rosca de Reyes. That translates as the wreath of kings - it is meant to be a circular loaf of bread with fruit and nuts baked in to symbolize jewels on Christ's crown. We lacked the ability to hit the store so we used a round pan of Hawaiian sweet bread.
Now, here's the hitch. The tradition states that you're supposed to bake a small figurine of a baby into the bread and whoever gets the figurine in their piece has to make the family meal on Candlemas in February. I don't believe we're celebrating Candlemas, but we're definitely going to be back in Texas for it so we decided instead that whoever got the figurine would just do a favor for the rest of the family.
How is it that my family, which has never observed Dia de los Reyes, would have a small figurine of the baby Jesus? Well... they don't. We... had to find a substitute.
And thus was born the Baby Toto.
The bread was already baked so I took it out of the pan, shoved the Baby Toto into the bottom of the loaf and put it back down into the pan. Then, because it is a circle, we spun it a few times so I wouldn't be able to see where the Baby Toto was hidden. Then we each took turns cutting off pieces as the tradition called for.
Uncle DJ found the Baby Toto in our modified Rosca de Reyes.
I LOVE the Rosca de Reyes tradition for the same reason as the star cookies - it is deeply symbolic. Jesus had to be hidden from King Herod's men or he would've been killed since Herod was looking to, ya know, off him. So, we hid the figurine of the Baby Jesus in the bread. IT MAKES SO MUCH SENSE.
I'm going to beg Justin to celebrate this holiday every year from here on out. It satisfies so much of my inner Spock.
Party like it's logical.
The holiday was actually a wonderful exercise. One of Justin's chief complaints about Christmas is the consumerism, which is in part a reflection of the disconnectedness of the current traditions from the history of the holiday. Dia de los Reyes was exactly the opposite of that. As we made the star cookies, we knew it was for the North Star. As we cut the bread, we knew we were searching for a carefully hidden Jesus. As for gift giving, we would've been honoring the gifts given to Jesus by the wisemen. Each of the traditions reflected the deep importance of the event they were commemorating and that was pretty freaking neat.
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