Holy Cross Day

I'm gonna guess that most of you who think about mexican holidays this time of year would think primarily about 5 de mayo, which, by the way is NOT mexican idependence day. But there are a LOT of holidays all jammed into about 2 weeks. Childrens' day is April 30th (kids go to school but get to play all day). May 1st is Labor Day (no school, no work, no banks, no p ost office...). May 2nd is contructions workers' day (no work for construction workers). May 3rd is Holy Cross Day, which I'll explain later. May 5th is Battle of Puebla Day (no school, some people don't have to work). May 10th is Mothers' Day. So there's 6 holidays in about 2 weeks! And I'm waiting for some paperwork from the mexican government that I need by May 20th, and they said it would be ready in 10 "working days." Ooops.

Anyhow, I must add that yesterday, 5 de mayo, I saw no celebrations. I thought, "wow, people in the States are eating mexican food today in honor of a holiday that they have no idea what it is!" But that's ok, any excuse to have some enchiladas is fine with me!!

So on saturday night Jean Paul and I went to the little town of Pinto to go to a festival for the day of the Holy Cross. JP's friend Ruben and his family (who are Christians) live there. It was interesting to see all the festivities, and a TON of people clogging the streets!


Everything that you can imagine was for sale:

Including some really yummy breads:

To celebrate the holiday, a big tower was set up that had shapes of various catholic icons that would later light up with fireworks:

And this is the courtyard of the church in Pinto:

A lot of people just went to the festival for the same reasons we did - cheap food and lots of stuff for sale. But something that's sad to me is that many people come from all around the area walking barefoot or crawling on bare knees to the church as a penetence in respect of the Holy Cross. Then at night, many people get drunk. In the court yard pictured above, there's a band playing and many many drunk people dancing. Some of them even had on scary masks that supposedly scare off evil spirits. It was really surprising to me to see this going on in a religious area where just that morning people were paying penetences to the Cross. It's also sad to me to hear of people mistreating themselves in honor and maybe worship of icons that are not God.

Here's me and JP with Ruben and his son Gabriel: