At this point, I took umbrage and said she could keep the rest of her gifts so twee....
It’s tough, being a substitute Santa when I would rather be re-re-reading all my Terry Pratchett Discworld books. Around this time of the year, I always make sure that Hogfather is on my bedside table. There’s something comforting about knowing that, once again, on Hogswatchnight (December 32), children will be getting their gifts, whether they have been good or bad, and there is no nonsense about coal and charcoal and rocks.
Oh, the irony of it all. In the novel, Death takes over from Hogfather, and here I am, wishing to be Hogfather in the adaptation of the novel (read re-enactment!) that is going to be held at a certain public garden... and I get to be a soppy Santa, and, what’s more, having to write his blog for him because he is shamming that he has Swine Flu.
I am stuck here, missing out on all the activities that purport to be Christmassy, but are really just commercial scams masquerading as Goodwill Towards Men.
My friends the Three Kings, well, they are very popular in Spain. This week, I received an invitation to the Cabalgata. It’s a cultural cavalcade where the Reyes Magos saunter about and chuck sweets at the kids and their elders. I heard them say they got hold of some really special hard-boiled sweets this year. I think they mean to use them as the maskarati on the Carnival Floats use perlini. Not nice. They can leave a nasty bruise.
But sweets that look like sweets are one thing, and sweets that look like something else again, are another thing altogether. Of course. In Catalonia, you can go to a pastry shop and buy something like what you Maltese call Pasta Rjali, but the shape is not of fruits or vegetables, and the container is not a cane basket.
They also have competition for your Għaġeb tal-Presepju. As a touch of scatological humour, they have a figurine going about his business. It’s a game with the kids of the household to find him hiding somewhere; his place is changed every day the grotto is up.
This pastur is known as el caganer. Originally, he was an ordinary peasant or farmer, smoking a pipe or cigarette and wearing the traditional floppy red Catalan cap with the black strip (barretina). However, these days one may find this statuette done in all manner of people in generic occupations (teacher, policeman...).
More to the point, however, is that it is also created as a send up of celebrities (Prime Minsters, football players...). Ironically, the most popular carvings to be sold are those of persons who are most loved – as well as those who are most hated, by the public.