Waiting for the wise men

Yes, on January 6th the Three Wise Men will visit our home, and leave all sorts of presents for the girls (one for me would be nice, too). They visit every year, since it's a major festivity all over Spain and in some Latin American countries. The kids behave their very best, because they know the Wise Men see everything!... In Spain this visit is carefully planned. The "kings" as they are known to children, parade on the streets with their servants and all kinds of stuff on the 5th, before dinner. It looks real and they are so impressed!! Sometimes one of their servants (pages would be the right word in English?) visits before the 6th of january to pick the letters the kids have written with their "list" of gifts. The little ones are usually quite scared. I don't blame them. Some are really sophisticated looking but others look quite ...odd. Like this one:



I don't know about you, but I wouldn't sit on his lap. My almost 2 year old didn't like him either! He actually visited her nursery school!. He is what we call the "white king". The second is the "not so white king". Kind of Arab looking. And the third one is the "black king". When I was little there was no immigration from Africa, and since black people were an oddity where I live, the black king actually had his face "painted" and looked really black. They didn't bother with brown paint! Here's the "not so white" king (we call it ros, in Catalan) parading on the streets of Barcelona, with journalists and stuff. You see how real this gets!



PD: I did some research. Jesus wasn't born on December 25th, or January 6th. We don't know, do we? And the Bible only talks about some "magu" (wise men) visiting Jesus, but we don't know if they were three or five, or twelve. So the Church actually mixed pagan winter festivities with religion to make it a big festivity!

PD 2: Feel free to correct my English! I post fast and don't have that much time!