Friday, February 8, 2013

Airports and Día de la Candelaria


You can assume, that as you are receiving this article, I made it to and from the airport in the darkness of night without mishap and without Mary Ann my excellent navigator.  The Froh family and Katy are all happy residents of the casa.  I have not previously mentioned some of the interesting thinks about flying into Oaxaca.  The kids plane was delayed for 45 minutes in Houston because a flight attendant (there is only one) on this flight did not show up.  By the time a replacement was found, the pilot could not be found.  As Katy says “We just hoped he was not in the bar.”  You might expect all this is happening on United.  By the way, the concourse for the Oaxaca flight is “B”.  This has got to be the oldest and crappiest concourse at the airport.  If you have time between flights, jump on the concourse train and head for “E” which is a super terminal.  It takes just five minutes for the train to go to all 5 concourses.  In concourse “E”, head for E4 and have a seafood dinner at Pappadoux Seafoods.

The Oaxaca airport (a very sleepy little place when you consider there are 400,000 people in Oaxaca), like all airports in the world, is under construction.  This is an airport where you go down the steps and onto the tarmac.  Next you walk to customs and immigration on plywood boards, next to plywood walls with little bed lamps on top lighting the way.  When the bags arrive, they don’t start the carrousel until the drug sniffing dog climbs all over the tops of the bags.  Nice looking dog!  I thought all the drugs were going the other way.  After immigration, the bags roll in, and you go into security where they have that wonderful gambling opportunity to push the button to see if a green or red light comes on.  If it is red you get to open your bags for full inspection.  Ugh!  Fortunately we came up green.  As a footnote to this tale of travel, when you fill out the Mexican entrance form you think you need fill out only the top.  In the middle it says “Official use only”.  However, there is another section at the bottom which will be your visa and you have to fill in name, passport, address in Mexico, etc.  It really slows up the Immigration line when, like us, you have not filled it “all” in.

Now you know February 2 is that quaint Ground Hog Day in the U.S.  Here, and elsewhere in Mexico, it is Día de la Candelaria, also known as Candlemas.  You must think I am pretty smart to know this, but the truth is I was chatting at the airport with a lady from New Mexico and an Oaxacan guide who were telling me about it. Below is the all the real information courtesy of Suzanne Barbesat of gomexico.about.com: 

Día de la Candelaria, or Candlemas, is celebrated throughout Mexico on February 2nd. It is mainly a religious and family celebration, but in some places, such as Tlacotalpan, Veracruz, it is a major fiesta with bullfights and parades. Throughout Mexico on this date people dress up figures of baby Jesus and take him to the church to be blessed, as well as getting together with family and friends to eat tamales.

February 2nd marks the mid-way point between the winter solstice and spring equinox and has long been thought to be a marker or predictor of the weather to come, which is why it is also celebrated as Groundhog Day. In many places it is traditionally a time to prepare the earth for spring planting.

February 2nd also falls forty days after Christmas, and is celebrated by Catholics as the feast of the purification of the virgin or as the presentation of the lord. According to Jewish law a woman was considered unclean for 40 days after giving birth so it was customary to bring a baby to the temple after that period of time had passed. So Jesus would have been taken to the temple on February second.

Yesterday, at the Zócolo, we saw women carrying around the dressed up dolls, and had no idea then what was going on.  Other evidence of the celebration has been fireworks going off which woke me up at 6:00 a.m.  Also the neighbors in the big field, we see from our deck, were burning brush early this morning so they must be preparing the earth for spring planting!

Young Oaxacan girl with Dia de Candelaria doll in Cathedral

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