January 6th, 2021

It is officially the new year and the world is starting to get back into the swing of the things. Kids are going back to school, work traffic is starting to appear and homework and tests are crawling back into students’ minds. But here in Spain, kids do not go back to school until next Monday while schools in the United States started this past Monday. The reason for this is that January 6th, which is the Three Wise Men Day or “Dia de los Reyes” as they call it here in Spain, it one of the biggest, if not the biggest, celebration of the whole year.

On this day it is celebrated in the Christian religion that the three wise men visited Jesus. Also, this day is different from the USA because many families trade out Santa coming on the night of December 24th to the wise men visiting on the night of January 5th.

Somthing that goes along with Dia de Los Reyes is that there is a special cake that is eaten. It is called “Roscon de Reyes”. The cake is in the shape of a circle with a hole in the middle and is covered with sugar and almonds or sugar and dried fruit. Many families also eat it with hot chocolate and dip pieces of the cake into the chocolate.

Inside the cake there is a small figurine which is believed to bring good luck in the upcoming year for the person who finds it. Some families also have a tradition of putting a “bad luck” figurine which requires the person that finds it to pay for the cake. With the family that I ate cake with, there was only a good luck figurine and out of sheer luck I happened to get it!

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Although this was a very different holiday season that what I’m used to, it was very fun to experience a different culture.

I hope you all had a fun and safe holiday season going into this new year!

Sincerely,

The Eternal Traveler