Los Reyes Magos – The Three Kings

Tonight in the whole of Spain processions are held for the arrival of Los Reyes Magos, The Three Kings.

On national television there is an hours long broadcast about the celebrations in Madrid, but also here in Valencia the streets were being decorated this afternoon already, tribunes and chairs for the audience were set up and people rushed to do their last minute shopping before the shops were closing a couple of hours earlier than normal.

Christmas and New Year’s are just finished and the Spaniard gets ready for another major party and of course the ubiquitous nationwide day off. Mia just went to school today after a two week holiday only to be free again today tomorrow…O…K…

The three kings – Melchor, Gaspar, and Balthazar, representing Europe, Arabia, and Africa, arrived on horse, camel and elephant – followed the star of Bethlehem bringing respectively gold, frankincense and myrrh to the baby Jesus.

Los Reyes Magos is far more popular than Christmas; the latter is basically celebrated with family dinners and going to church. I think Los Reyes Magos can be compared to the Dutch celebration of Sinterklaas, only quite a bit more popular even.

Although it is a festival mainly for the children, adults also give each other presents and of course there is a big family dinner tonight in every home!

We have decided to also give a present to each other instead of doing it during Christmas. Mia is cooking a nice meal, after make-sushi during the weekend, Japanese seems to be the theme this week with beef teriyaki tonight.