Saturday, January 06, 2007

The Three Kings, our three “roscones” and the last but one day of Christmas


The dining room table laid for the Three Kings' lunch

Olivia smiling at her Mother after lunch

Sarita guapa looking realy guapa with the paper hat from her cracker. She will be going back to China on 15th January.

Hi

Well today is the last official day of Christmas and it is the Three Kings’ Day which is much celebrated in Spain and is the day when most Spaniards exchange gifts. However Father Christmas has become more and more important in the last 10 or 15 years and so some people exchange gifts now on the 24th but the for the most traditional Spaniards, today, the 6th of January is as important as ever.

In this household we celebrate everything there is to celebrate, so today we had the traditional “Roscón de Reyes” for breakfast. The roscón is a sweet brioche like cake shaped in a circle and decorated with crystallised fruit. It always hides a surprise which is usually the figure of a King. Tradition has it that whoever finds it pays for the roscón - well Olivia found 2, so ... Actually this year we have ended up with 3 roscones; one Eladio and my Father bought with chocolate in the middle, one I bought yesterday at a favourite pastry shop and on top of that we got given one by José Antonio and Sara who came for lunch today. It’s quite obvious we are going to get sick and tired of it very soon.

Most of our presents come on the 25th, but some always find their way under our tree on the 6th in the morning , so the girls and Eladio had a little something to open this morning. My little something came yesterday from Eladio when we went to exchange the camera he had bought me for Christmas for a higher end version – you will notice the difference in the quality of the pics in this Blog from now on, I hope. Thanks darling for your generosity.

Lunch, was the last festive lunch of the Christmas Season and Susi and I went all out to lay a beautiful table with lovely food. Being very unoriginal, I prepared a typical English Christmas lunch, roast turkey with all the trimmings. Just look how beautiful the dining room table looked. We used my great-grandmother’s blue china dinner service which we realised later could not go in the dishwasher!!

Well I say today is the last official day of Christmas but actually this year there will be one more Christmas celebration and that will be the annual dinner tomorrow night at Julio’s house when this whole family – and we are 6 including Oli’s boyfriend, José Luis – and Fátima descend on his bachelor flat in downtown Madrid for the best party of the season. There we will pull the last crackers and exchange the last of this year’s presents.

And that then really will be the end of Christmas.

Greetings to you all my friends and, once again, here’s to a superb new year for us all.

Masha

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