Okay, another course in my University
of Life:
Brazilian Culture 101:
(Specifically focusing
on the State of Rio Grande do Sul)
The
richest cultural experiences we can have (in general) often focus
around holidays or special events. Something that I wasn't expecting
when we moved to Brazil was how many holidays and special events we
would have. Maybe it's because we tend to celebrate both
American and Brazilian
holidays in our family whenever we can, but it's easy for me to lose track of when
the next special occasion will be, as there are so many!
Not that we celebrate with all-out full-blown parties for every
occasion, by any means, but generally Holiday = Day off from work!
Which, from the mom perspective, means “Daddy is home to spend more
time with us!!! Yay!!” So, just for fun, I decided to list some
of the days that we have celebrated (or at least honored by not
working!) this year as part of Brazilian tradition.
March
8 (or about 40 days before Easter) = Carnaval! Probably
the Brazilian celebration most commonly recognized world-wide, for better
and for worse. I'm not going to go into a lot of detail on this one.
Here's the thing about Carnaval:
There are certain places that you probably don't want to be during
this celebration, and certain channels on TV that you may decide to
flip through more quickly than others, to avoid seeing too much human
flesh. There is a huge parade with scantily clad women dancing
Samba, which is probably the most famous event associated with this
holiday. But really, everyone has a different way of celebrating,
and the Brazilians friends and family with whom we associate remain
fully clothed and did not even dance one Samba song (that I know of). For us, this year it meant time
off from work for a family beach trip! Which was quite nice and
relaxing.
April
21 = Tiradentes. This
day commemorates a national hero of Brazil who lived in the 1700's.
I don't know his full story, but apparently he is important enough to
get a day off from work. I guess it is comparable to President's
Day.
March/April/May
? = Paixao de Cristo & Pascoa (Easter Weekend). The
biggest difference I noticed in how it is celebrated here is the size
and type of Easter eggs children receive here! It is also a
tradition for many families to leave out carrots and water the night
before for the Easter Bunny, and then in the morning he will have
left a 'nest' of eggs for the children to find. We really enjoyed
keeping some of our previous traditions from the US, as well as
learning some new ones here! And we ended up with about a 2-month
supply of chocolate eggs afterwards. :)
