Easter is Observed in Mexico

      Holy Week in Mexico is important religious observance as well as important vacation period. It is preceded by several observances such as Lent and Carnival, as well as an observance of a day dedicated to the Virgin of the Sorrows, as well as a mass marking the abandonment of Jesus by the disciples. Holy Week proper begins on Palm Sunday, with the palms used on this day often woven into intricate designs. In many places processions, masses and other observances can happen all week, but are most common on Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday, with just about every community marking the crucifixion of Jesus in some way on Good Friday. Holy Saturday is marked by the Burning of Judas, especially in the center and south of the country, with Easter Sunday usually marked by a mass as well as the ringing of church bells. Mexico’s Holy Week traditions are mostly based on those from Spain, brought over with the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, but observances have developed variations in different parts of the country due to the evangelization process in the colonial period and indigenous influences. Several locations have notable observances related to Holy Week including Iztapalapa in Mexico City, Taxco, San Miguel de Allende and San Luis Potosí.

Palm Sunday procession of Trique people
n Santo Domingo, Oaxaca

      Holy Week is one of the most widely celebrated and important religious observances in Mexico. Almost all towns and cities in the country have some kind of public observance during a two-week period that starts from Palm Sunday at least to Easter Sunday and can extend into the week after. Mexican television features movies, documentaries and other shows focused on the religious event and other topics related to the Catholic faith, especially in Latin America. The U.S. traditions surrounding Easter have made very little inroads in Mexico, with icons such as the Easter Bunny and events such as Easter egg hunts limited to supermarkets and areas right along the border with the United States. Like most Mexican Catholic traditions, those related to Holy Week and Easter are based on the Spanish Catholic calendar. Holy Week is preceded by Lent and Ash Wednesday, which itself is preceded by Carnival . However, a number of traditions and customs have developed over the centuries. As most Holy Week related events occur outside and in large gatherings, “antojitos” (roughly translated as Mexican street food or snacks) is the most associated with the holiday. Prior to Easter Sunday, Lenten dietary rules are still in effect for the observant, so popular street foods include pambazos with cheese, fried fish, fried plantains, hot cakes/pancakes with various toppings. Candies are a popular street food at this time, especially traditional and regional ones made from coconut, tamarind and various fruits. Holy Week was also the traditional start of the ice cream and flavored ice season, which was originally made in Mexico City with ice and snow brought down from the Popocatepetl volcano. Ice cream fairs are still held at this time. Today’s frozen treats include ice cream in tubs, as well as popsicles made from both fruit and cream, as well as snow cones called “raspados.” Another popular refreshment is called “aguas frescas” or sugared drinks made from fruit or other natural flavorings such as tamarind or hibiscus flowers. The reason for the popularity of both frozen desserts and flavored drinks is that spring to early summer is generally the warmest part of the year in Mexico.

      Just before Holy Week proper, there are two events celebrated in various parts of the country. The first is the feast of the Virgin of Sorrows (Virgen de los Dolores). This occurs the Friday before Good Friday and focuses on the pain and sacrifice of Mary knowing that Jesus had to die to save mankind. This image of the Virgin is usually dressed in purple and altars are set up to her on this day. On the Wednesday before Easter, a mass called the “vespers of darkness” (los matines de la tinieblas) recalls the disciples’ abandonment of Jesus. The altar of the church will have a candelabra with fifteen candles, with one candle extinguished after the singing of a Psalm until only the center candle, representing Jesus, remains lit.

Procession with crosses at the
La Cuevita church in Iztapalapa

      Holy Week begins on Palm Sunday, and many communities have special masses dedicated to the blessing of palm fronds. These fronds are often woven into crosses and other designs, sometimes quite intricate and brought by parishioners to have holy water sprinkled on them. Some fronds are later burned and the ashes saved for marking foreheads on the following Ash Wednesday. Maundy Thursday is the beginning of the celebration of Easter proper. Cathedrals in the country have special masses celebrated by bishops, with “chrism” a sacred oil used in the sacraments, is consecrated. Many churches also hold reenactments of the Last Supper, but Masses usually omit the exchanges of greeting of peace as a reminder of Judas’ betrayal of Jesus. From this day through Holy Saturday, church bells are traditionally not rung.

      Reenactments of the day of crucifixion take place in almost all communities in Mexico on Good Friday and for a number these traditions extends to a passion play enacted most or all of Holy Week. The focus of these reenactments focus on the carrying of the cross by Jesus and his crucifixion as told by the Stations of the Cross. In major productions, hundreds of people participate including the entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem, the Last Supper, the Betrayal, the Judgment, the procession with the cross, the Crucifixion up to the Resurrection .

      Holy Saturday is dedicated to vigil as the waiting time between Jesus’ death and resurrection. Statues of the Virgin Mary are dressed in black as a symbol of mourning. Frequently there is a solemn evening mass during which participants hold lighted candles. This is then followed by an event called the Burning of Judas mostly practiced in central and southern Mexico Originally, it was the burning in effigy of the disciple that betrayed Jesus, a custom introduced to Mexico as part of the evangelization process. During the Mexican Inquisition, effigies were also burnt to mock and protest the burning of people at the stake. These effigies were banned but the idea of protest was transferred to the Judas figures. The Burning of Judas continues in other places but it has been banned in Mexico City because of safety and pollution concerns. The figures are still made in the city but many are now collector’s items.

Palm Sunday observance at a school

      Easter Sunday is celebrated with mass which is usually crowded. Church bells will again ring and the plazas around the churches after Mass will be crowded with churchgoers as well as street vendors selling food, toys, balloons and more.

      In many areas, processions, masses and other activities extend for another week. Mexico’s Holy Week traditions are based on Spanish ones brought over during the Conquest, along with those created during the evangelization process with some indigenous influence. This has resulted in variations in the celebrations in various regions and towns. A number of these variations have become well known, such as those in Taxco, San Luis Potosí, San Miguel de Allende, Ajijic, and Iztapalapa in Mexico City. Other communities with notable celebrations include Pátzcuaro, Tzintzuntzan, Querétero, Huajicori, Mesa de Nayar, Creel, Cusarare (Chihuahua), San Ignacio Arareco (Chihuahua), Jerez, Atlixco, Temascalcingo, San Juan Chamula and Zinacantán.

      The most famous passion play in Mexico is held in Iztapalapa in the east of Mexico City. This production involves over 4000 local residents (all of which are born in Iztapalapa) which perform scenes related to the last week of Jesus’s life from Palm Sunday to Good Friday. The production has been done each year since 1843 and today the spectacle attracts over 2 million spectators, mostly Mexican. The play is not a strictly Biblical production as there are a number of characters such as a spy, a dog, a “wandering Jew” and others that are unique to this event. When Christ is captured, Aztec drums and flutes are played. Pontius Pilate sentences Jesus on the town of Iztapalapa’s main square then whipped. He then carries a cross from this square to the Cerro de la Estrella on a route over mile long through eight of the borough’s oldest neighborhoods. The most important event is the procession with the cross and the crucifixion scene portrayed on Cerro de la Estrella. Many others called “Nazarenes” follow, carrying their own crosses and wearing real crowns of thorns like Jesus. The play ends with Judas hanging himself after the crucifixion.

Participant dressed as a Roman soldier
for the Iztapalapa passion play

      Another important and unique commemoration of Holy Week occurs in Taxco in the state of Guerrero. It begins on Palm Sunday, with a large wooden statue of Christ traveling on a donkey from the town of Tehuilotepec about four miles to the center of Taxco. The image is preceded in its entrance to Taxco by children on bicycles and residents portraying the Twelve Apostles as well as drummer. Processions continue all week, led by very young children dressed as angels, immediately followed by older girls dressed in white with white veils, walking barefoot and swinging incense burners containing copal. In these processions, Biblical figures related to the Passion of Christ are represented by wooden statues from the town and surrounding villages, carried on litters, accompanied by musical instruments playing melodies with pre Hispanic influence. The most notable aspect of these processions are the penitents who inflict pain and suffering on themselves during the processions. While these displays have moderated or disappeared in other parts of Mexico, they remain severe in Taxco. Penitents form into three brotherhoods called the Animas or Bent Ones, the Encruzados (the Crossed) and the Flagelantes (Flagellants). All wear black robes, a horsehair belt and a hood to hide their identity. The Animas walk in procession bent at the waist, never straightening, carrying relics, crosses or candles. This is the only brotherhood that admits women, who are distinguished by lighter chains attached to their ankles. The Encruzados carry a bundle of thorned blackberry canes of up to 100 pounds tied onto their shirtless back and arms with a candle in each hand. The Flagelantes are also bare backed and carry a large wooden cross, in their arms, in their hands are a rosary and a whip with metal points. At appointed places, the penitent hands off the cross, kneels and whips his back. One Maundy Thursday, a scene recreating the Garden of Gethsemane is set up at the Santa Prisca church and on Friday, the statue of Jesus praying is “captured” and “jailed.” On Friday it is “crucified” inside the church with the penitent brotherhoods looking on. A candlelight vigil is on Holy Saturday ending late in the night with the announcement that Christ has risen. Easter Sunday is quiet.

Amuzgo Good Friday procession in Xochistlahuaca.

      San Miguel de Allende is noted for its observances of Holy Week, and for two weeks there is at least one procession per day. The focus for much of the pageantry is the “El Señor de la Columna” Christ image, which is brought from the sanctuary of Atotonilco and paraded among the various churches of the area from the Sunday before Palm Sunday to the Wednesday after Easter when it returns to Atotonilco. On Good Friday, this image is carried to the parish church of San Miguel, accompanied by residents dressed as the disciples and Roman soldiers. At noon, images of the Holy Family, the disciples, Mary Magdalene and John the Baptist are also in procession and a passion play is performed. At dark, the images reappear in procession but dressed in black and accompanied by measured drumbeats. During this time , concheros dancers sporadically appear, especially in the main square of San Miguel. The Burning of Judas occurs on Easter Sunday, not Holy Saturday.

      A number of cities and towns hold Processions of Silence, where people march on the street holding candles in silence. The custom comes from the Spanish city of Seville . The most important of these processions is held in the city of San Luis Potosí on Good Friday. It begins at 8pm at the Plaza del Carmen, with actors dressed as Roman troops playing drums and bugle. This guard then knocks on the door of the Carmen Church. The beginning of the procession leaves the church, carrying crosses and paschal candles. They are joined by more as they move onto the streets, dressed in white robes with cone shaped hoods with symbols denoting what religious group they belong to. In addition to the robed participants, there are also those dressed as charros, and Adelitas (women of the Mexican Revolution) as well as some in indigenous dress. The focal point of the procession is a large figure of the Virgin of Solitude, the Virgin Mary left alone after the death of Jesus. It and its platform weigh more than a ton and are carried on the shoulders of forty men. The procession continues around the town, punctuated by ritual speeches until midnight, when the last of the robed figures returns to the Carmen Church.

Statue of a Flagelante penitent in Taxco

      In Tzintzuntzan for most of Holy Week, there are men on horseback, in red hoods and lavender robes that patrol the area to make sure that stores or craftsmen are doing business as usual. A central activity are processions with penitents led by seven large crosses which have been in the care of seven family for generations. These crosses are then at the front of the parish church on Good Friday as a passion play is performed. Local legend says that as recently as the 1970s, in a nearby village, penitents still had themselves nailed to crosses.

      A major pilgrimage site for Holy Week is Chalma, the second most visited pilgrimage site in Mexico after the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe. The focus of the pilgrimage is a image of a black crucified Christ and the rites here are a mix of Christian and pre Hispanic influences, such as bathers dipping into a fresh water spring for purification. Dance is a central part of the rites, and an Aztec tradition states that newcomers are obliged to dance for at least one tune.

      Other important events for Holy Week include a procession behind a black faced Christ figure in Patzcuaro, the veneration of a purple-robed paper mache image of Christ at the San Francisco Church in the historic center of Mexico City and that of the Tarahumara in Chihuahua, who paint themselves white for ritual.

Easter in San Miguel de Allende Mexico 2009

The Tale of Peter Rabbit and Benjamin Bunny

      The Tale of Peter Rabbit is a British children's book written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter that follows mischievous and disobedient young Peter Rabbit as he is chased about the garden of Mr. McGregor. He escapes and returns home to his mother who puts him to bed after dosing him with camomile tea. The tale was written for five-year-old Noel Moore, son of Potter's former governess Annie Carter Moore, in 1893. It was revised and privately printed by Potter in 1901 after several publishers' rejections but was printed in a trade edition by Frederick Warne & Co. in 1902. The book was a success, and multiple reprints were issued in the years immediately following its debut. It has been translated into 36 languages and with 45 million copies sold it is one of the best-selling books of all time.

      The book has generated considerable merchandise over the decades since its release for both children and adults with toys, dishes, foods, clothing, videos and other products made available. Potter was one of the first to be responsible for such merchandise when she patented a Peter Rabbit doll in 1903 and followed it almost immediately with a Peter Rabbit board game.

      The story focuses on a family of anthropomorphic rabbits, the widowed mother rabbit cautioning her young against entering a vegetable garden grown by a man named Mr. McGregor, who had baked her deceased husband into a pie. Whereas her three daughters obediently refrain from entering the garden, her rebellious son Peter defies his mother by trespassing into the garden to snack on some vegetables, losing his clothes along the way. While there, Peter is seen by Mr. McGregor and loses his clothes trying to escape. He finds difficulties in wriggling beneath the opening in the fence through which he'd managed to slide past earlier to invade the garden, and later finds that his abandoned clothing articles were used to dress Mr. McGregor's scarecrow. After returning home, a sickened Peter is bedridden by his mother whereas his well-behaved sisters receive a sumptuous dinner of milk and berries as opposed to Peter's supper of chamomile tea.

      Through the 1890s, Potter sent illustrated story letters to the children of her former governess, Annie Moore, and, in 1900, Moore, realizing the commercial potential of Potter's stories, suggested they be made into books. Potter embraced the suggestion, and, borrowing her complete correspondence (which had been carefully preserved by the Moore children), selected a letter written on 4 September 1893 to five-year-old Noel that featured a tale about a rabbit named Peter. Potter had owned a pet rabbit called Peter Piper. Potter biographer Linda Lear explains: "The original letter was too short to make a proper book so [Potter] added some text and made new black-and-white illustrations...and made it more suspenseful. These changes slowed the narrative down, added intrigue, and gave a greater sense of the passage of time. Then she copied it out into a stiff-covered exercise book, and painted a colored frontispiece showing Mrs. Rabbit dosing Peter with camomile tea".

^{More Related Content:}

• The Tale of Peter Rabbit at Project Gutenberg
• The Tale of Peter Rabbit Audio Book at Project Gutenberg
• The Tale of Peter Rabbit Digital Book at The University of Iowa Libraries (Flash)
• World of Peter Rabbit: A website maintained by Potter's first publisher Frederick Warne & Co.

The Runaway Bunny

"The Runaway Bunny" by Margaret Wise Brown.

Read Along by ReadaRoo Kids.

      Margaret Wise Brown (May 23, 1910 – November 13, 1952) was a prolific American author of children's literature, including the books Goodnight Moon and The Runaway Bunny, both illustrated by Clement Hurd.

      The middle child of three whose parents suffered from an unhappy marriage, Brown was born in the Greenpoint neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, granddaughter of Benjamin Gratz Brown. In 1923 she attended boarding school in Woodstock, Connecticut, while her parents were living in Canterbury. She began attending Dana Hall School in Wellesley, Massachusetts, in 1926, where she did well in athletics. After graduation in 1928, Brown went on to Hollins College in Roanoke, Virginia.

      Following her graduation with a B.A. in English from Hollins in 1932, Brown worked as a teacher, and also studied art. It was while working at the Bank Street Experimental School in New York City that she started writing books for children. Her first book was When the Wind Blew, published in 1937 by Harper & Brothers.

      Brown then went on to develop her Here and Now stories, and later the Noisy Book series while employed as an editor at William R. Scott. Her popular book The Little Fur Family, illustrated by Garth Williams, was published in 1946. Also in 1946, Brown wrote The Little Island and Little Lost Lamb, both under the pseudonym Golden MacDonald and illustrated by Leonard Weisgard. The former won a Caldecott Honor recognition in 1946 and the latter the Caldecott Medal in 1947. In the early 1950s, she wrote several books for the Little Golden Books series including The Color Kittens, Mister Dog and Scuppers The Sailor Dog.

      In 1952, Brown met James Stillman 'Pebble' Rockefeller Jr. at a party, and they became engaged. Later that year, while on a book tour in Nice, France, she unexpectedly died at 42 of an embolism, two weeks after emergency surgery for an ovarian cyst. (Kicking up her leg to show the doctor how well she was feeling ironically caused a blood clot that had formed in her leg to dislodge and travel to her heart.) By the time of Brown's death, she had authored well over one hundred books. Her ashes were scattered at her island home, "The Only House" in Vinalhaven, Maine.

      Brown left behind over 70 unpublished manuscripts. Her sister, Roberta Brown Rauch, after unsuccessfully trying to sell them, kept them in a cedar trunk for decades. In 1991, Amy Gary of WaterMark Inc., rediscovered the paper-clipped bundles of the more than 500 typewritten pages and set about getting the stories published.

      Many of Brown's books have been re-released with new illustrations decades after their original publication. Many more of her books are still in print with the original illustrations. Her books have been translated into several languages; biographies on Brown for children have been written by Leonard S. Marcus (Harper Paperbacks, 1999) and Jill C. Wheeler (Checkerboard Books, 2006). Have a Carrot, a Freudian analysis of her "classic series" of bunny books has been written by Claudia H. Pearson (Look Again Press, 2010).

^{More Related Content:}

• Official website
• Fan site
• Papers archived at Hollins University
• Runaway Bunny Concerto website

The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes

"The Country Bunny and The Little Golden Shoes"

Readaloud from Grandma's House YouTube.

      Edwin DuBose Heyward wrote the children's book The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes (1939).

      Heyward was born in 1885 in Charleston, South Carolina. He was a descendant of Judge Thomas Heyward, Jr., a South Carolina signer of the United States Declaration of Independence.

      As a child and young man, Heyward was frequently ill. He contracted polio when he was eighteen, then two years later contracted typhoid fever and the following year fell ill with pleurisy. Although he described himself as " a miserable student" who was uninterested in learning, and dropped out of high school in his first year at age fourteen, he had a lifelong and serious interest in literature. He passed the time in his sickbed writing verses and stories.

• Charleston Childhood: The First Years of Dubose Heyward.

The Tales of Uncle Remus by Jerry Pinkney

Get ready for all of the laughs, adventure and hip-hopping good times in this all-new imaginative and modern retelling of Uncle Remus' best-loved tales. Parents and kids alike will delight in the escapades of the most mischievous and clever Brer Rabbit as he gleefully outwits Brer Fox, Brer Bear and a whole cast of other critters! With irresistible and toe-tapping new songs and an all-star lineup of voice talent (Wayne Brady, Nick Cannon, Danny Glover, D.L. Hughley and Wanda Sykes), The Adventures of Brer Rabbit is sure to be a family favorite for years to come!

      Uncle Remus is a fictional character, the title character and fictional narrator of a collection of African-American folktales adapted and compiled by Joel Chandler Harris, published in book form in 1881. A journalist in post-Reconstruction Atlanta, Georgia, Harris produced seven Uncle Remus books.
      Uncle Remus is a collection of animal stories, songs, and oral folklore, collected from Southern United States African-Americans. Many of the stories are didactic, much like those of Aesop's Fables and the stories of Jean de La Fontaine. Uncle Remus is a kindly old former slave who serves as a storytelling device, passing on the folktales to children gathered around him.

Joel Chandler Harris

      Harris created the first version of the Uncle Remus character for the Atlanta Constitution in 1876 after inheriting a column formerly written by Samuel W. Small, who had taken leave from the paper. In these character sketches, Remus would visit the newspaper office to discuss the social and racial issues of the day. By 1877 Small had returned to the Constitution and resumed his column.
      Harris did not intend to continue the Remus character. But when Small left the paper again, Harris reprised Remus. He realized the literary value of the stories he had heard from the slaves of Turnwold Plantation. Harris set out to record the stories and insisted that they be verified by two independent sources before he would publish them. He found the research more difficult given his professional duties, urban location, race and, eventually, fame.
      On July 20, 1879, Harris published "The Story of Mr. Rabbit and Mr. Fox as Told by Uncle Remus" in the Atlanta Constitution. It was the first of 34 plantation fables that would be compiled in Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings (1880). The stories, mostly collected directly from the African-American oral storytelling tradition, were revolutionary in their use of dialect, animal personages, and serialized landscapes.

       Remus' stories featured a trickster hero called Br'er Rabbit ("Brother" Rabbit), who used his wits against adversity, though his efforts did not always succeed. Br'er Rabbit is a direct interpretation of Yoruba tales of Hare, though some others posit Native American influences as well. The scholar Stella Brewer Brookes asserts, "Never has the trickster been better exemplified than in the Br'er Rabbit of Harris." Br'er Rabbit was accompanied by friends and enemies, such as Br'er Fox, Br'er Bear, Br'er Terrapin, and Br'er Wolf. The stories represented a significant break from the fairy tales of the Western tradition: instead of a singular event in a singular story, the critters on the plantation existed in an ongoing community saga, time immemorial.

      Harris described Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, as a major influence on the characters of Uncle Remus and the Little Boy. When he read Stowe's novel in 1862, he said that it "made a more vivid impression upon my mind than anything I have ever read since." Interpreting Uncle Tom's Cabin as a "wonderful defense of slavery," Harris argued that Stowe's "genius took possession of her and compelled her, in spite of her avowed purpose, to give a very fair picture of the institution she had intended to condemn." In Harris's view, the "real moral that Mrs. Stowe's book teaches is that the. . . realities [of slavery], under the best and happiest conditions, possess a romantic beauty and tenderness all their own."
      The Uncle Remus stories garnered critical acclaim and achieved popular success well into the 20th century. Harris published at least twenty-nine books, of which nine books were compiled of his published Uncle Remus stories, including Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings (1880), Nights with Uncle Remus (1883), Uncle Remus and His Friends (1892), The Tar Baby and Other Rhymes of Uncle Remus (1904), Told by Uncle Remus: New Stories of the Old Plantation (1905), Uncle Remus and Brer Rabbit (1907). The last three books written by Joel Chandler Harris were published after his death which included Uncle Remus and the Little Boy (1910), Uncle Remus Returns (1918), and Seven Tales of Uncle Remus (1948). The tales, 185 in sum, became immensely popular among both black and white readers in the North and South. Few people outside of the South had heard accents like those spoken in the tales, and the dialect had never been legitimately and faithfully recorded in print.
      To Northern and international readers, the stories were a "revelation of the unknown." Mark Twain noted in 1883, "in the matter of writing [the African-American dialect], he is the only master the country has produced."
      The stories introduced international readers to the American South. Rudyard Kipling wrote in a letter to Harris that the tales "ran like wild fire through an English Public school.... [We] found ourselves quoting whole pages of Uncle Remus that had got mixed in with the fabric of the old school life." The Uncle Remus tales have since been translated into more than forty languages.
      James Weldon Johnson called the collection "the greatest body of folklore America has produced."

^{More Related Content:}

• Joel Chandler Harris, New Georgia Encyclopedia
• The Wren's Nest, Harris's historic home in Atlanta, GA
• Robert Roosevelt's Brer Rabbit Stories
• Theodore Roosevelt on Brer Rabbit and his Uncle
• Black father: the subversive achievement of Joel Chandler Harris, African American Review
• Works by Joel Chandler Harris at Project Gutenberg
• Works by Joel Chandler Harris openly available with full text and large zoomable images in the University of Florida Digital Collections
• Uncle Remus His Songs and Sayings from American Studies at the University of Virginia
• "Death Calls 'Uncle Remus' and Whole World Mourns", Atlanta Georgian, July 4, 1908. From the Atlanta Historic Newspaper Archive
• Remembering Remus - Frank Stephenson, Florida State University