Happy Easter

[rojo]

I have tomorrow off as well - Yay! (I always find it kind of long from Jan. to April with no holiday, on top of having crappy weather.)

Ha, my mother would go to the cupboard to get the chocolate chips only to find there were barely any left! My sister and I took turns pilfering them, little by little. Especially me. For shame. Oh well, in my defense, what else can you expect from a chocoholic.

Thinking back now, I wish it had occurred to me when I was young that I was just robbing myself of my Mum`s chocolate chip cookies... Duh! Live and learn...

 

[klezmer]

Happy Easter!

 

[Sybarite]

Hope everyone had a good Easter.

Here's a little seasonal picture from Perpignan, in the south of France, of the Sanche – a Good Friday procession of the penitents.

 

[Krummhorn]

Wow ... that procession must be very humbling to witness. I assume the 'penitents' are robed in black ... what symbolism is the red garment? Looks like that one is also carrying a bell in his left hand.

 

[Sybarite]

I found it a very eerie experience – the costumes and the tradition of the procession itself date back to medieval times. As far as I could tell, all the Catholic churches in the city have parishoners in the march, with statues and banners and crucifixes. The penitents are all male – female members of the procession might be penitent, but they don't get to be hooded anonymously – and they are dressed in black or red, so I don't think that there's any major difference between the colours, this was simply how it looked at the front.

This was the very front of the Perpignan procession; they'd just come around the corner from a brief stop in front of one of the largest churches, where there'd been a short sermon. You heard them coming first – the bell that you mentioned, plus a very slow drum beat (you can just see a couple of drums in the picture). It is really quite spinetingling.

Some of them walk in bare feet – there's actually one at the back of the picture, to the right. And the cross behind the first penitents is decorated at the top with "the instruments of crucifixion".

These marches happen all over the region, both in southern France and over the border in Spain.