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At passing the schools, one cannot avoid the temptation of becoming a child once
again and one has to swing on the swings and slide off as before. ON the night of The
Wise Men, everything is enjoyed.
Youth in
Ciadoncha and one visitor singing The Wise Men. 2006
Photo Lucía Varona
The youth also sing The Wise Men with the adults, but they like to burn fireworks
and scare the adults. When it’s snowing, it is them who initiate real snow wars.
After singing, the town returns to the Cultural Center of Santa Barbara where they
drink some garlic soup which comes just in time before going to bed so that they can
sleep a few hours in order be ready by one thirty in the afternoon, which is when they
celebrate mass. The parents who have small children do not go to this celebration
because they have to get up real early so that their children can see what the Wise Men
left them.
That night, the children clean a shoe and leave it outside of their house with a bit
of straw and water. Tradition says that the Three Wise Men come from the east to leave
them gifts at night. In many cities and some towns they have a procession of Wise Men,
which is a parade wherein the Three Wise Men, Melchor, Gaspar and Baltasar, come in
carriages and throw candy to all the people who watch them pass. Soon after the
procession, the children go to bed, but not without preparing their shoes with a bit of
straw and water for the camels. That way the wise mean leave them the gifts that they
have been waiting for.
This tradition has also had a lot of change. The majority of the participants
indicate that the Wise Men used to leave them an orange or caramel candy, but never
toys. Today, the children receive a lot of gifts on that day.
On the sixth they go to mass once again and then to the Bar, like every Sunday.
They drink a cocktail in the bar, the men in one room and the women in another.
Although, the young begin to mix themselves amongst the men, women and children.
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