Big holiday here in Mexico. I understand this tradition came from Spain.
It was Christmas here before Santa Claus came from the North (USA).
Worked out good for the kids here. Now they have three holidays to receive gifts. The other being dia de los niños.
Is dia de los reyes celebrated where you live?
Well, January 6 is celebrated as the feast of the Epiphany, also once called Twelfth Night. It’s the day on which the arrival of the wisemen, to honor Jesus birth, is recognized.
Our church will be having the Sunday School kids do their big Epiphany procession during the service this Sunday. They really do a splendid job.
That is it Baker.
They also call it dia de los tres magos. Day of the three wise men.
Thank you for your reply.
In Colombia, unless the 6th falls on a Monday anyway, they move it to the following Monday, in order to have a long weekend for partying. It’s like the end of navidades–or the beginning of carnavales, if you’re in Barranquilla, where everything is a reason to party.
In the Army we called it “Three Kings Day.” It was an optional holiday; If you said you observed it, you’d get the day off!
Big holiday here in PR still. Had the day off in fact.
Yes, we celebrate Epiphany (Episcopal here like Baker). We will have small cakes with prizes on Sunday for the Sunday school students, and act out the story of the wise guys, scuse me, kings. Not othersise a holiday here in NY state!
Is there a special recipe for those cakes?
Not really. My wife is in charge of it this year and will simply be doing vanilla cupcakes with vanilla frosting. The kids won’t care much one way or the other!
Other people who’ve done it in the past have used other (more ambitious) recipes…I believe there’s something involving French almond something-or-other that is a traditional one (you can see that I know a TON about it), and someone once used a king cake recipe direct from New Orleans (or at least they SAID that’s what they did). If you’re curious I can see if I can dig that one up.
My wife does say there are lots of more traditional (or at least traditional-sounding) recipes on Pinterest, if that floats anyone’s boat. Me, I’m fine with the vanilla for the Sunday school kids (and teachers, of whom I am one…).
Lord’a’mercy, no it wasn’t! I mean, it’s part of the Christmas season, but it’s not Christmas day.
Christmas is Christmas, the Epiphany is the Epiphany. Different feasts. The Epiphany is the traditional gift-giving day in many places, although it may be different people who bring the gifts: in (some parts of?) Italy it’s the Befana (a good spirit/fae/witch whose name derives from Epifania), in Spain the Reyes Magos…
And yes, in Spain we celebrate it. It might be the one national holiday that will be impossible to remove, despite having Christian roots, as it is the one Christian holiday that inmigrants with other religions adapt quickly: Muslims who won’t take part in many other celebrations due to the Christian roots will bring their kids to the cabalgata (the parade) on the 5th and let them take part if their school does.
We do have a special cake, Baker, although recipes vary. It’s called a roscón de reyes. It’s a hard, large donut-shaped cake, generally split in half with whipped cream in between the two layers, and with sugared fruit and a sprinkling of sugar on top. There is one little figurine inside called the bean (in the oldest recipes, it is an actual bean): in theory, he who finds it is supposed to pay for the cake (never seen it happen).
In Olite they have a tradition called el rey de la faba, the king of the bean: children are given a large meal ending with roscones and there is only one bean. The one who finds it is crowned king of the bean for that year and presides the celebrations.
Ulf the Unwashed, I did find the following pastry with almond paste!
Nava, that link mentions the bean too.
I have recipes for king’s cakes from New Orleans style cookbooks, but I wasn’t sure if they were the same thing as they seem to be eaten at carnival time, just before Lent. They also are said to have a little figure, or bean, hidden in them.
I can’t vow for this recipe (I don’t bake), but the pics look like the usual article and the explanations are in English. It says we got it from France and the French for an Eslavic cook, but that doesn’t seem to match with records of Rey de la Faba celebrations way before Louis XV. Wherever we got it from, it’s good, but it’s also good we only eat it once a year because that thing’s a dietetic bomb.
Right now there is a wave of trying variations on it: some bakers have offered your choice of sweetened or unsweetened cream for years; now there’s also varieties where the roll is marzipan or a big bagel.
Thank you very much for that recipe Nava! It looks very similar to the New Orleans cakes, but the decoration is different.