tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-440967410082699790.post807878046294415394..comments2023-12-13T23:04:18.876+00:00Comments on The Battlefield of Love: Our traditions come from our fathers, not our mothersClaire Khawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11557436240917008429noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-440967410082699790.post-52251993237955253132011-09-23T08:17:17.109+01:002011-09-23T08:17:17.109+01:00Thank you for your very moving account of your los...Thank you for your very moving account of your lost traditions, Adolfo.Claire Khawhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11557436240917008429noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-440967410082699790.post-70246182582067878102011-09-22T18:07:05.996+01:002011-09-22T18:07:05.996+01:00I think someone needs a hug!
Oh, man, you have tou...I think someone needs a hug!<br />Oh, man, you have touched a chord! We have a very similar tradition here in Mexico. On November 1st and 2nd, celebrations are held in honor of dead people, basically pagan traditions under the guise of Catholicism. On those days, every family stage an ‘Ofrenda’ (Oblation) in its house. A big table is placed in the living room and covered with a nice tablecloth. In one side of the table you place all your ‘guests’, your beloved dead ones, a collection of sugar made skulls, the size of an Easter egg with the name of your dead relatives printed on the forehead. Then you have to cook and place on the table all the dishes and drinks your ‘guests’ used to like when they were alive. ‘Mole poblano’, Mexican rice, ‘tamales’, pork in green chili sauce, steamed goat, chicken in peanut sauce, ‘corpse’s bread’ (a special bread just baked for that day), tequila, brandy, chocolate bars, coffee, cigarettes, anything has to be cooked and served on the table, along with candles, ‘cempasúchitl’ flowers (marigold flowers, the dead people’s flowers) and a Christian cross. The food is placed on November 1st at noon, so the spirits of dead children come to have their meal. Adults have their turn the next day, November 2nd. No matter how delicious the food is or the time and effort you spent in cooking it, you are not allowed to touch it, nor taste it, nor eat it. All the dishes are on the table for two days and finally dumped to the trash on November 3rd at noon.<br />I still remember my two grandmothers, every one of them at their own houses staging ‘Ofrendas’ year after year. Both of my parents’ families come from an Ultra-Catholic yet very poor background. Although my two grandmothers spent their elderly years in an economic security environment provided by their sons and daughters, both of them had very simple lives, almost monastical. But those two days of every year were different. I remember the richness of the food, the hours, the hard efforts, and the neatness to prepare every dish; the respect to pray and to call the spirits and the seriousness to continue a tradition. It was like a… like a… like a… what’s the fucking word...? Oh, yes! It was like a religious experience.<br />I still remember how one day my maternal grandmother was ready to clear up the table. Before taking every dish, glass and bottle, she finger tested one of the dishes she has cooked, and with a gesture she approved of starting to clear up the table. I witnessed the fact and she could read in my face my confusion, so she finger tested again the food while telling me: ‘See? Total and completely tasteless! That means that our dead beloved ones, including your grandfather, already finished having their meal, and now they have gone back at God’s house”. I, being a five year old boy, was very impressed, almost shocked, from hearing that.<br />Do we continue practicing such a tradition in my family? Of course not! The reason? Well, as I told you my father’s family was very poor. When my father was four, my grandfather died and my grandmother was left widow with four children. At the age of eleven my father left the school and started working in any job to provide for my grandmother. Some years later he found the way to finish elementary school, then grammar school and finally to get a BS in Engineering. Then, he married my mother, raised three children with her (me and my two brothers) and gave us a good living. In the way, he became Marxist-Communist-Atheist, so he doesn’t like to ‘practice witchcraft, nor he believes in stupid superstitions’. So, when my two grandmothers died, many family traditions died with them. Oh, yes! Ye olde good times! Who cares, anyway?<br />http://goo.gl/cq0lAdolfonoreply@blogger.com