I just wanted to call some attention to one of my all-time favorite posts here on Pattern Recognition, which honors a holiday tradition from one of my favorite areas of the world, the Catalan region of Spain. I posted this last Holiday season, but in reading it, it just never gets old.
Catalan families go into the woods and find a Christmas Log (Tió de Nadal) to bring into their home. It’s painted or otherwise decorated with a face, and wrapped in a blanket. Over the weeks before Christmas, the Caga Tió is fed sweets and other treats, in order to get him ready for the command performance on Christmas. After weeks of being fed, the Caga Tió is ready. He is then beaten with sticks by the children of the family until he poops out treats for the children, usually in the form of the Catalan treat called turron. Yes…the log poops out the children’s treats, which they then consume. Caga Tió literally translates into “Pooping Logâ€.
Go read the rest of the post. Really. There’s even a video…it’s worth it, I promise.
2 replies on “Blast from holidays past”
that sounds like a really weird tradition, feeding a log candy then beating it with a stick.
that sounds like a really weird tradition, feeding a log candy then beating it with a stick.