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VIRGIN BLANCA FESTIVAL

Look! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Mary Poppins! No, it is actually Celedón, the protagonist of the Virgin Blanca Festival in Vitoria-Gasteiz, descending from the San Miguel Church over a packed crowd in the square below. This along with the chupinazo (fireworks) signal the start of the festivities.

The tradition of Celedón is actually a fairly recent development in the history of Vitoria’s festival. It began in 1957, when a few citizens wanted to create something special for their celebrations. The character of Celedón is supposedly based on a real person named Juan Celedonio de Anzola from the village of Zalduondo in Alava. With his typical clothing and umbrella in hand, he is a reference to the villagers from the past who would travel to Vitoria to join in with the celebrations. Since his incarnation, there have been four people who have played the role of Celedón. The most recent is Gorka Ortiz de Urbina who has been Celedón since 2001.

Celedón is of course, most famous for his descent over the Virgin Blanca Square. However, this role is not played by Ortiz de Urbina but rather a stunt dummy. The dummy is attached to a rope where he careens toward a balcony in the square while the crowd reveals below. Once he arrives to the balcony, the real, human version of Celedón appears and the crowd goes wild. Celedón gives his speech while around 20,000 cigars are lit and 30,000 bottles of cava (Spanish champagne) are popped open. If you plan on being in the crowd, its probably best to wear clothes you don’t care about!

After Celedón gives his speech, encouraging the attendees to have fun, he makes his way through the crowd. All the while people try to touch his Txapela (hat) for good luck. Once the opening ceremony is complete, the party-goers make their way through the streets of the old town, asking for buckets of water to be thrown onto them from the people in the balconies above. This is a perfect way to cool off on a hot, August day.

The next 5 days of the Virgin Blanca Festival are a huge mix of various activities and events. Like other city festivals in the Basque Country, the Virgin Blanca Festival features fireworks competitions, cooking competitions, free concerts, Basque rural sports and bullfights. There are also vaquillas (calfs) that are brought into the bullring in the mornings and attendees can run around in the ring with them.

Another important feature of the festivities are the “cuadrillas de blusas.” These are groups of men, similar to teams, that get together and wear traditional basque clothes and particular blusas (shirts). The blusas compete against each other in various anecdotal games and even have parades throughout the city. The parades are basically a party on the go.

Just like the city itself, the Virgin Blanca Festival is often overlooked. There aren’t many tourists there because most only know about Pamplona’s San Fermín Festival. But there is really a lot to do and see and the festival has something to offer everyone. Check it out for yourself.

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Las fiestas de La Blanca en Vitoria-Gasteiz

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La Bajada de Celedón, la música, el colorido, las cuadrillas de neskas y blusas... Disfruta en Vitoria con cinco días inolvidables de celebración, del 4 al 9 de agosto, con las fiestas de La Blanca.

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Carnivals in Tolosa:
Many towns of the Basque Country celebrate carnivals in a special way but the most popular and overcrowded are held in Tolosa.

Many towns of the Basque Country celebrate carnivals in a special way but the most popular and overcrowded are held in Tolosa.

The big party starts officially on "Big Thursday". At noon the opening speech is given followed by the burst of fireworks. Within the next day ("Weak Friday") programme the Festival is the most remarkable activity: Leidor Theatre stages a performance when the protagonists are the town inhabitants.

On Saturday, "Zaldunita bezpera", Tamborradas (parades led by adults and the children) take place across the streets of Tolosa. On Sunday, the streets will be packed with inhabitants dressed in pyjamas and slippers as if they had recently woken up. That day, as well as on Monday ("Astelehenita") and on Tuesday ("Asteartita") floats and bands parade across the streets accompanied by music and dances. The celebration concludes on Tuesday with "the burial of the sardine", although "Piñata Igandea" comes along with the rhythms of street bands.

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The Tolosa Carnival is a lot of fun! Here are a few clips that I took from my day there. I hope you can make it out to this event if you are in the Guipuzkoa area during February. It is definitely a great time!

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Olentzero – an inseparable part of Basque Christmas Traditions

As you would expect even Basque Christmas traditions dig deep into their pagan past.  Here, during the winter months, the flint-grey skies linger over the Baztan Valley while the ember-red autumn leaves burn out slowly and silently on the forest floor. Even the mighty autumn winds, which have hunters darting for their guns in October, have run out of breath and are too lazy to scatter the leaves in their wake. The mood is changing, winter is approaching, and its dark, steely, misty nights slowly throttle village after village in the Basque Pyrenees.

Basque tradition of Olentzero – a model in the village shop

This is the time of dread, and the moment when Olentzero, the only survivor from the times of the giant Jentillak of Lesaka, comes down from the mountains. He is a man of strange appearance, his hair is wiry and straw-like, virtually fossilized under his Txapela (Basque beret). He has open, way-worn eyes and a straggly, unkempt beard. His face is haggard and tanned from its exposure to the charcoal he burns and his fingers are gnarled and knobbly. The Atorra (Basque shirt) he wears is musty and foul-smelling.

Olentzero gets down from his Pottoka (semi-wild horses that roam the Basque mountains) and his Abarkak (shoes) crunch through the crisp leaves detonating tiny displays of fire-crackers at each step. Something special is about to begin the forest is crisp and tense.

As the story goes, Olentzero, the charcoal maker, used to tour the Basque villages with his sickle, beheading those who ate too much on Christmas Eve.  (However, these gruesome acts seemed to do little to dampen his own appetite for food and drink for he was known, paradoxically, for his gluttony and drunken ways, feasting on rich meats and strong local liqueurs – usually Patxaran, the Basque liqueur made with sloe berries and aniseed).

With the Christianization of the Basque lands, Olentzero’s personality no longer fitted with Christian values and those personality traits considered too pagan were removed. Today’s Basque Christmas traditions portray Olentzero as a self-effacing and humble man with a kind and generous heart who carves wooden animals, toys and dolls. Once he has filled his big charcoal sack with toys he hikes down to the village in the valley to hand out the wooden figures amongst the children.

One day he came down to the village to find a house in flames and immediately ran into the house to save the children. Having saved everyone he was just about to save himself when the roof collapsed and buried him. As the people from the village gathered outside the burning ruins they witnessed a white flash leaving the flames, darting upwards and heavenwards. Apparently the fairy that had raised him in the woods had come to save him saying:  “Olentzero you have such a good heart, you even gave your life for others. You should not die. You shall live forever, making toys and other presents for all the children in this village and in the whole Basque country.”  And that is how the story is told today, every 24th December, when Olentzero stars in the Basque Christmas traditions in every Basque Country town.

Olentzero on Christmas Eve in Ituren

The word “olentzero” is the combination of two words : olesen and aroa which gives us an indication of the figure’s significance: “aroa” means “time” or “season”. “Oles” means to “call” or “ask”.

Now, despite attempts to eradicate all Basque traditions during Franco’s dictatorship, Olentzero is a popular character in all Basque villages. He visits almost every village of the Basque provinces, often by cart or wagon, or leading a donkey laiden with presents and is represented as a fat jolly peasant with his wide-brimmed black Txapela, puffing a pipe and – not atypically and most probably to his great relief – still surrounded by copious quantities of food and wine!

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The day prior to Santa Águeda is a celebration of great importance in numerous towns and cities of the Basque geography. On February 4th, in many towns of Bizkaia, Gipuzkoa and Alava, groups of people and choirs parade down the streets singing canticles to honour Santa Águeda, recalling her life and martyrdom. Rod and walking ("makilas") sticks accompany their canticles.

Among the parades taking place on the occasion of Santa Águeda, we will highlight three processions. The prior Sunday to February 5th, on February 5th and the following Sunday, the inhabitants set course for the Sanctuary of Santa Águeda, which is located in Kastrexana (Barakaldo). The most predominant procession is the one taking place the following Sunday to Santa Águeda Day, as thousands attend the celebration.

Santa Águeda was a Sicilian virgin and martyr from the 3rd Century. She is the patron saint of women and fertility that is why so many mother-to-be women turn to her. She is believed to have great many powers such as the ability to prevent fires and volcano eruptions, protect from bad spirits and cattle diseases and increase cattle production. Among the Basques, Santa Águeda also has the ability to cure cephalalgia and migraines.

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Santa Ageda Celebration, Spain [Travel with Manfred]

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The Day of the Geese, also known as Antzar Eguna, is a competition held as part of the San Antolin festival in the Basque fishing-town of Lekeitio, in which participants attempt to decapitate a goose suspended on a rope above the town harbor.

As their boats pass underneath, young men attempt to jump off and grab the goose (which has been coated in grease) and remove its head. To add to the challenge, spectators on either side of the harbor pull the rope taut and then let it fall slack, dunking the participant in the bayThis is repeated until either the young man has been shaken loose - in which case the next participant takes his place - or he has successfully removed the head of the goose. Any dispute as to who has won is resolved by a rowing race around San Nicolas Island in the middle of Lekeitio Bay. As a prize, the winner of the competition gets to keep the goose.

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Day of the Geese- Dia de Los Gansos in Lekeitio Basque Country

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Please check out my travel blog on Gadling, http://www.gadling.com/bloggers/dave-seminara/ And my personal site, www.daveseminara.com Twitter: @DaveSem https://twitter.com/DaveSem

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San Fermin in Iruña (Pamplona) Running of the Bulls

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San Fermin in Iruña (Pamplona) Running of the Bulls

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Even if this festival does not happen in the Basque Autonomous Community, it can be considered a Basque celebration as it is celebrated in Navarra.

The Running of the bulls is a practice that involves running in front of a small group of cattle, typically six, of the toro bravo breed that have been let loose on a course of a sectioned-off subset of a town's streets.

The most famous running of the bulls is held during the nine-day festival of Sanfermines in honor of Saint Fermín in Pamplona,

The festival of San Fermín is a week-long, historically rooted celebration held annually in the city of Pamplona, Navarre.

The celebrations start at noon on the sixth of July, when the opening of the party is marked by setting off the pyrotechnic chupinazo, and continue until midnight, on the fourteenth of July, with the singing of the Pobre de Mí. While its most famous event is the encierro, or the running of the bulls which happens at 8:00 AM from the 7th of July to the 14th July, the festival involves many other traditional and folcloric events. It

Its events were central to the plot of The book called The sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway, which brought it to the general attention of English-speaking people. It has become probably the most internationally renowned fiesta in Spain. Over 1,000,000 people come to participate in this festival.

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San Fermin Festival in Spain http://www.alaturkaonline.com/ Participants run in front of Cebada Gago fighting bulls during the first running of the bulls at the San Fermin Festival, in Pamplona, northern Spain on July 7, 2017. The San Fermin Festival is held annually from 06 to 14 July in commemoration of the city's patron saint.

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There are many different Korean traditions that differ a little bit to their American counterparts.  One of my favorite traditions we do every year is Korean New Years.

There are many different traditional dishes that are consumed on this New Years including rice cake soup, different pastries, and tasty drinks.  Many times people also dress up in traditional clothing called hanbok.  Many families also start the year off by visiting and paying respect to their dead ancestors.

My three favorite parts about Korean New Years is eating all of the great food that is prepared, playing Yutnori(a really fun board game that involves tossing sticks that act like dice), and getting my annual saebaeton.  It is a tradition in Korea to bow to your elders and receive saebaeton, which is money for you to spend or save for the new year.  All the kids get super excited for this, as this usually ends up in their biggest payout of the year, because you bow to your extended family in addition to your close family.  I think that New Years in Korea is a fun tradition with a lot of really good food and fun things.

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The 4th of July or Independence Day is a federal holiday in the United States. Although traditions may vary by family, there are some basic American traditions characteristic of the holiday. The 4th of July is typically spent with family and friends. It is a day with many festivities. To begin the day there are often 5Ks and triathlons. There are slow bike races, candy scrambles, sand castle competitions, and food eating competitions. Every July 4th, there is the "Nathan's Famous" hot dog eating contest at Coney Island, which is televised. The winner from 2017 ate 72 hot dogs in 10 minutes.

The 4th of July is a holiday to spend time with your family, such as a picnic in the park or a day at the beach. There are usually large potluck barbecue's. Although food may vary by family, American dishes are served, such as hot dogs, hamburgers, macaroni salad, corn on the cob, apple pie, and ice-cream. People like to show their USA pride, by wearing face-paint and red, white, and blue clothing. Sometimes houses, cars, or bikes are decorated for the occasion.

At night, the festivities close with a fireworks finale. Small towns and big cities usually have their own firework celebration. People watch the fireworks from many different places, including their backyards, the beach, desks, even football fields. New York City, Washington D.C., San Diego, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Boston, and Seattle have some of the largest firework events. Oftentimes, they are even televised.

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Thanksgiving is the most stereotypical American holiday. Celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November, it commemorates the first successful harvest of the Pilgrims at Plymouth in Massachusetts, one of the earliest English settlements in the United States. It is generally celebrated with a massive feast of turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie, among other things. It’s also an American tradition to play football on Thanksgiving, and many schools and universities will schedule their most important match for this day. Thanksgiving has created a lot of quirky traditions, including the presidential pardoning of the White House Thanksgiving turkeys. However, my family has its own Thanksgiving traditions that are especially strange.

Thanksgiving is a way of celebrating the arrival of the Pilgrims, an early group of immigrants who fled England because they didn’t agree with the Church of England. They came to Plymouth, which is in the south of Massachusetts, my home state, and founded a settlement there. They came on a boat called the Mayflower, which has become a somewhat legendary name in the United States. Because of this, when my uncles were younger, my grandmother, who was cooking for Thanksgiving dinner and wanted to keep them distracted and out of the kitchen, decided to give them a squash and have them carve it into a boat like the Mayflower and decorate it. The tradition has since grown and now every year on the night before Thanksgiving day, my family will gather at my grandmother’s house and we’ll make several squash boats decorated with beautiful cut-paper sails. Everybody brings something from their house, and in past years we’ve had dolls, Egyptian statues, and even real butterfly wings to decorate the boats with. It’s a very fun tradition, but as far as I know it is unique to my family. However, similar to Halloween, squashes and pumpkins are an important part of the Thanksgiving dinner.

Most families gather for Thanksgiving and use it as an opportunity to see relatives who live far away or to talk with the weird uncle you forgot you had. In my family, since we have so many people coming, we have a lot of rituals in setting up the table and preparing the meal. For many years (although recently we haven’t had to), peeling chestnuts was an important albeit arduous ritual. In addition, we make well-decorated name cards for each guest. We generally spend the entire morning preparing, then take a break before the actual meal.

Thanksgiving is notorious for being the holiday where political disputes and other quarrels surface in families, mostly because everyone comes and they may not all agree on everything (or even anything). Luckily, in my family, we keep our disputes to one thing: a game of charades. While many families go out and play football, my family fights over who knows more book, song, and movie titles, and the game can be a little terrifying to those who have never played before. Sometimes the titles come easily and sometimes they have to be acted out all the way (like Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe). It’s a fun way to end the night, though, and I enjoy it a lot.

Although not every family shares in the quirky traditions of mine, many families have their own Thanksgiving traditions that make the day unique for them. Traditions or not, Thanksgiving is a great way to transition into the winter season!
(Here is a squash boat)

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There are several traditions in Japan that are not the most widely discussed or famous, but are still prominent, that I want to discuss in this post. Many of these traditions are eccentric and strange, but are uniquely Japanese, and in my opinion add to the vivacity of the culture as a whole. The first peculiar tradition is on Christmas Eve. In many Western cultures families eat turkey for Christmas dinner -- however since turkeys are pretty difficult to find in Japan and most ovens in Japanese homes are too small to fit such large portions, people like to eat chicken from Kentucky Fried Chicken. Yes -- KFC on Christmas Eve is a tradition in Japan! On December 24, there are always very long lines outside the KFCs spread out all around Japan.

Another tradition occurs on February 3rd, called Setsubun. Setsubun is the eve before the first day of Spring according to the Japanese lunar calendar. This holiday is accompanied by a traditional ritual called "Mamemaki," which literally translates to the "scattering of beans." This ritual involves throwing beans around the home (and later picking them up) to both cleanse away the evil from the former year and drive away evil spirits for the upcoming year. While throwing the beans, one yells out "oniwa soto, fukuwa uchi" -- which translates to "evil spirits go out, luck/fortune enters" (the home). This custom shares a similar idea as Harae, which are the rituals associated with purification in the Japanese traditional Shinto religion, which oftentimes uses salt as a form of warding off evil spirits and protecting the home.

Another notable tradition in Japan takes place on Children's Day on May 5th. On this day, wind socks that look like carps (or koi) are hung up on buildings, outside of homes and off ceilings. The significance of the carp stems from an ancient Chinese story about a carp that swims against the river's current to become a dragon. The wind that these wind socks (representations of kois) face represent the current in this old tale -- which overall symbolize a healthy childhood and progression into becoming a grand adult dragon.

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Hanukkah was not traditionally a very important Jewish holiday. It was mostly a celebration of beating the Greeks in a war, with a story about some oil miraculously lasting longer than expected tacked on so that people wouldn't feel guilty about celebrating something secular. However, in America Jewish children complained about not getting presents in December like their Christian friends did, so Hanukkah effectively became Jewish Christmas (although there's no Jewish Santa Claus, so parents just give their kids presents openly), which also made it the Jewish holiday that is the most well-known to non-Jews.

Hanukkah starts sometime in December or late November (the exact date varies because it's on the lunar calendar), and continues for eight nights. The most important tradition is lighting the menorah. A menorah is a candle holder made to hold nine candles, usually in a straight line, with one candle, usually the center one, raised up above the others. Each night, you insert a candle into the raised position (this candle is called the shamas), and insert one additional candle into the menorah for each night passed (one on the first night, two on the second night, etc.). Then you light the shamas with a match or lighter, say a prayer in Hebrew (and an extra prayer if it's the first night), and use the shamas to light the other candles. This is easy and takes very little time, making it much less cumbersome than most Jewish rituals.

Other Hanukkah traditions include distributing chocolate coins, eating food fried in oil like latkes (potato pancakes) and jelly doughnuts, and gambling (usually for the chocolate coins) with a four-sided top called a dreidel. These are all things that most people like, which probably contributes to the popularity of the holiday.

Every November at the University of Chicago, there is a formal debate about whether the best Jewish food is the latke or the hamentash (a triangular pastry with jam or poppy seed filling eaten on Purim, a different Jewish holiday). This has been happening for 70 years, and the latke has won every single debate. A video of last year's debate can be found here: youtube.com/watch?v=Ut7wEN0zwwg

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Once a rocket is shot into the sky (known as the txupinazo), the festivals mascot, Marijaia makes her grand entrance onto the balcony. What follows next is the culmination of events that forms the biggest party of the year, known as Aste nagusia or Semana Grande.

At Aste Nagusia, Basque culture is celebrated at its fullest. There is traditional Basque music and dancing, as well as Basque rural such as wood chopping and stone carrying competitions. The streets are lined with tents offering a wide variety of food and drinks. And for the kids there are parades of giants and the Gargantua, who devours the children who enter into his mouth. But don’t worry, inside the Gargantua is a slide and the children exit safely from his posterior.

There are of course bullfights and you can even join in the fun. The bulls are, however, really calves and have their horns padded. So while it isn’t perhaps completely without danger, it is a much safer alternative to the  running of the bulls in Pamplona.

Marijaia – Protagonist of Aste Nagusia

All of the daily events are followed up by a nightly fireworks competition that lights up the city’s sky. Afterwards, there are loads of concerts and even more partying.

The Semana Grande festival comes to an end with a strange twist of fate, when Marijaia is lovingly set ablaze. They say that her hands are raised into the air as a sign of optimism and to symbolize dancing. But maybe its also because she ends up being set on fire. In any case, check out the Aste Nagusia festival in Bilbao and follow Marijaia’s lead. Throw your hands into the air and party like you just don’t care – just skip the burning part.

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In the colder and more northern parts of the United States, winter is a sight to behold and a joy to experience. The snow and the cold are the two most remarkable things. The temperatures can get down to below -20 degrees Fahrenheit in the night, so everyone wears three or more layers of clothing. While the past few years have been lighter in terms of snowfall, 10 years ago, my hometown got over 100 inches of snow over the course of the winter! My school district traditionally only cancels school for a day in the direst of circumstances. There have been a couple of times where every other school district in the state cancelled classes for the day since the temperature was so low or there was so much snow outside, but my classmates and I still had to drag our feet through 10-plus inches of snow or -10 degree weather to get to school for classes. If the buses could run, we had to too.

As many other parts of the United States do, of course my hometown has traditions like sledding, building snowpeople and drinking hot cocoa, but a number of stranger traditions have evolved too. Half a mile away from my house, the night of the 21st of December many people from the area build a bonfire with a pile of wood larger than two cars sitting next to each other. People bring dead wood to burn, but occasionally old furniture as well. My neighborhood is especially fun to walk or drive around in the winter, since most people decorate their homes for Christmas or other holidays. Streams of lights, inflatable Santa Clauses and wire reindeer on rooftops are common, plus multicolored disco balls and signing robotic elves on front porches to welcome greeters and onlookers.

The lakes on either side of my hometown freeze over in the winter, and you can walk out onto them sometimes all the way across. Hundreds of people take vacations from work, pick up tents from their garages and camp out on the ice. They make and fish through small holes. It looks almost like a military camp from the 19th century, there are so many “ice fishers”, as they are called, out there. The truly bold and daring people strip down to swimsuits and jump into the lake through holes in the ice; they immediately hurl themselves back out!