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All over Mexico on Palm Sunday,
vendors will set up stall outside churches to sell novelties
made from elaborately wovenpalms. Easter means bunnies, eggs and chocolate, right? Or maybe it means drinking tears, touring seven churches, or blowing up an effigy of Judas? The Easter season in Mexico is far different than it is in the English-speaking world, because it is really the fusion of two sets of foreign customs. As the United States imposes more of its influence on Mexico's urban centers, many of this nation's age-old traditions are slipping away in large cities such as Guadalajara, although they are still maintained in many pueblos. Palm Sunday Palm Sunday, the last Sunday of Lent before Easter, differs from its Anglo counterpart in the use of elaborately woven palms. Weavers ply their craft outside churches, and worshipers follow the priest into church with the woven fronds. Later, those palms are traditionally hung on the doors of Mexican homes to ward off evil. When dry, the palms are burned, and according to popular legend the smoke carries the household's prayers to the sky. Solemnity Unlike its Anglo counterpart, Easter in Mexico is more of a solemn remembrance of Christ's death than an egg-hunt or a chocolate frenzy. The tradition of "Mary's Tears" provides stark contrast to the chocolate bunny. Though not practiced much in Guadalajara anymore, young couples would knock on the door of their neighbors and ask "Is the Virgin of Grief weeping here?" If the response was in the affirmative, the couple would enter the home and drink a cup of water (representing tears) in front of an "altar of fire" -- an arrangement containing a picture of Mary, candles, pine branches and seeds. On Maundy Thursday in Guadalajara the Roman tradition of visiting seven churches (symbolizing Jesus' visits before he was crucified) is still alive. In pueblos, horse hooves were often covered on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, and church bells are not rung. People are called to mass by a whack of wooden clappers called matracas. Burning Judas The most spectacular of Easter traditions south-of-the-border is the burning of a Judas effigy filled with firecrackers. This custom, which takes place Holy Saturday, was outlawed in Guadalajara in the 1960s when several people died from a massive explosion, but it still continues in rural areas. In recent years, the burning Judas has come to embody controversial political figures and other sources of public derision. Have a different Easter Much has been made of Easter in Mexico bridging two different cultures. In order to convert Indians, priests often allowed indigenous peoples to fuse their customs with Easter rites, and many of these customs appear in passion plays. The burning of palm leaves is another example. Missionaries would even go so far as to allow Indians to continue worshiping their gods as long as they named them after a saint. The same kind of fusion is also true in the Anglo-Saxon Easter. When the church converted Germanic tribes to Christianity, 16th Century missionaries fused certain pagan rites with Christian ones to ease the transition. The word "Easter" comes from the name of a Teutonic goddess, and rabbits, lambs, chicks and eggs are all parts of Germanic iconography that coincide with the concept of rebirth. Is NAFTA killing Easter? Sadly, commercialization and U.S. influence are causing more Easter bunnies to pop up in Mexican department store windows. Traditional Mexican parents often lament that when they were younger, a person never celebrated Easter, and that eating chocolate, hunting for eggs and having fun during a sober week of worship go against the meaning of the season. Of course, some customs never seem to fade, and the most purely Mexican thing to do during Holy Week is to pack up the kids, hop in the car and head straight to the beach. As highway traffic jams attest, it is a custom that continues to be solemnly upheld. |
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