If you live in the center of the Island, a parranda may also involve a cabalgata, riding on horseback from house to house instead of driving a car or a truck. Surprising someone at home with a parranda–a group of friends with any number of musical instruments (real or improvised) singing at the top of their lungs to wake everyone up (neighbors included)–is also known as an “asalto”, literally a “hold up.” The truth is that every home is supposed to be prepared for these “surprises” and have plenty of snacks, rum, and if you happen to be the last house to get the parranda or asalto, you should also be ready to cook an asopao, which is intended to help all the partygoers recover from all the drinking. Strings and percussions lead the voices in traditional parrandas, where friends gather in one place and then go from one friend’s house to another with a “portable party,” singing aguinaldos navideños that are upbeat and may even include some off-color lyrics every so often. While we do sing villancicos that have been passed on from generation to generation starting with those who came directly from Spain, our typical Christmas music is a mix of the indigenous and African cultures together with the Europeans’, which evolved into our very own rhythms and sounds. Our Navidad is a lot about the music and the food, too. Very few people work the day before Christmas, the day before New Year, and the day before Three Kings Day… and everything except businesses in the tourist area will be closed on those three days. Decorations stay up way past New Year’s, as does the “Christmas Spirit”. Then we have octavas and octavitas, eight days after Epiphany and then eight more (for a total of 16) days of festivities everywhere you go. Children in Puerto Rico get presents on December 25, Christmas Day, and January 6! We also love to put up Christmas trees inside the house and little lights outside that brighten up the whole street. So we added Santa Claus and his reindeers to our Christmas traditions. troops landed on our Island’s south shores and claimed their booty after beating Spain in the Spanish-American War. In the late 19th century (1898 to be exact) U.S. It is common to stage a Nativity scene in schools-mostly with younger kids who are still willing to dress up and have fun with it-during a gathering of parents around Christmas time, and since leading roles are very limited, almost everyone ends up dressed as a shepherd ( pastorcito), or what someone at some point thought shepherds should look like in a school play! One of them is Epiphany, or Three Kings Day, January 6, when the Three Wise Men are believed to have visited baby Jesus, bringing gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh “on the 12 th day of Christmas.” On the eve of Three Kings Day, or Día de Reyes, children gather grass in shoeboxes for the Three Kings to feed their camels as they stop to leave gifts in each home. Spain got here first, and although the British, French, and Dutch tried their best to take over the Island, in the end Spain won out, and so, Puerto Rico is an Island where Spanish is spoken and many Spanish cultural traditions remain. Puerto Rico was colonized by the Europeans starting in 1493.
And it doesn’t matter if you are Catholic, Protestant, Baha’i, Jewish, Buddhist, agnostic… Navidad in Puerto Rico is for everyone! Although the word does come from the Latin nativitas (nativity) and, yes, it all started with the birth of Jesus, the truth is that in Puerto Rico Navidad really means that the party starts in November right after Thanksgiving, and ends in January, right after the Fiestas de la Calle San Sebastián, more recently known as la SanSe. Let me be blunt: I will not call this the “holiday season” because in Puerto Rico this is Navidad.
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