Candelaria y Compañía

February second is Ground hog Day for us, but here in Spain they celebrate the candelaria. No large rodents or shadows involved in this fiesta, instead we have big bonfires and stuff ourselves with chorizo and filetes--yum!

The tradition comes (if I'm not mistaken) from pre-Christian times when people lit fires to light the long winter nights and celebrate the beginning of lengthening days. Of course the solstice was back in December, but really about now is when you can start to appreciate the change in daylight.

As with most heathen traditions, the church adopted this one and it became a celebration honoring the Virgin here in Spain. The fire's light represents the light of the Virgin Mary. Another tradition during this holiday is the presentation of new babies to the Virgin: babies born in the past year are presented to the Virgin in a special mass.

Last Thursday my friends and I celebrated the candelaria with a roaring fire, lots of food and drink and plenty of sevillanas (no babies or Virgins present). The official celebration, however, was this weekend. There were huge bonfires all over town. The next morning it reeked of wood smoke in the streets and there were plenty of people complaining about the ashy mess they had to clean up from windows, patios, balconies and front doors. ;)

For the weekend's celebration a friend from Sevilla and her boyfriend came to town. Sunday, we met up for our pre-lunch cervecitas in Leiva bar and in the end everyone decided to come over to the house to eat rather that order at the bar. It's been a long time since I had company over--it was fabulous! Luckily that morning I happened to have made stuffed eggplants and I had a garbanzo stew in the fridge that I was planning to freeze. There were seven of us and only one eggplant was leftover when we were through.

As usual, the un-planned get-togethers are the best. We threw a table cloth down, set the table, brought in all the chairs we have, heated the food and crammed around the dining room table for a great lunch.

Comer bien acompañado alimenta más. ;)