Buona Pascuale (Happy Easter)

We got back from our trip today and wanted to call to say Happy Easter, then realized everyone would be at church so we'll just use our friendly "blogger" to say we hope you've had a great day and the weather is nice for you.

The village of San Biagio Platani (don't even try to pronounce it) has a traditional procession on Easter and we were privileged to be there today. Each year during Holy Week the men put up structures made of bamboo which are amazing in themselves. These things have to be about five stories tall and are put together every year along the street in front of the church. They run about four blocks on either side of the church front. Besides being made of bamboo, every corner and important line is covered (really covered) with fresh bay leaves. Millions of bay leaves. Anything green you see in this photo is bay leaves. On each end of the structure the lower section of the archways are covered with rosemary leaves. I think it's amazing that they can even make something like that.

Then, the women of the village spend the week making fancy sculptures, paintings, pieces of art using bread. We can't put many photos of them on so tomorrow we will put them on flicker. Click there tomorrow 'cause we really want you to see the fancy things they do. We took pictures of just a few of the many pieces they had displayed. I can't even make a loaf round on the top so I can't imagine making any of these. Now I know you're asking, "what about that first picture on your blog?" yep---all of bread. The swans, the trees, the tablet and flowers, even the almost-life-sized people and the fence around them all----all made of bread and bay leaves.

On Easter Sunday they have a processional in which a statue of Mary is paraded around the town. The band plays meloncholy music and the whole town follows Mary through the streets under the structure made by the men and women of the village. This is to represent the sadness Mary felt when Jesus had been killed on the cross. After a couple of rounds through the town a statue of Jesus joins Mary and the band strikes up happy music representing Mary seeing that Jesus has risen and is alive. The atmosphere of the day is festive and, as is usual whenever any town in Sicily has a festival, there are street vendors everywhere.

Note to our kids: This is spring break week so we're going to be bouncing here and there on the island. If I miss calling someone, please forgive, we'll call anytime we can. Or we may have to call with cell phones and have shortened conversations this week.