Oh Christmas log,Oh Christmas log, How lovely are your...droppings?

At the risk of sounding like the legend herself- Gwen from Gavin and Stacy, I have decided to give the omelette speech a rest. Ok, I need to mention it, just one sentence. I did it I finally did it. The Spanish omelette was a roaring success. Hurrah! When I say roaring, I mean my mum didn’t dash to the bathroom or hide it in her napkin. Gone are the painful home economics days where nobody touched my apple crumble.She gave it the thumbs up and I did a little victory dance to celebrate. I realise I have gone over my sentence limit but this omelette was a particularly worthy one. Worthy of a few more words past the punctuation mark of doom.

Frying the potatoes and whisking an egg.

A little on the brown side but perfectly cooked!

This is how you do it.

Now that the omelette victory is out of my system and no that is NOT just another picture of the last very burnt attempt , on to more important matters. It’s Christmas time! Or it was Christmas time at the time of beginning this post. Merry merry Christmas to those near and far! I have decided to gift you all, for a little post Christmas cheer, to some knowledge of a Catalan Christmas.

When looking at the title of the post I know a few people, mainly siblings, will be saying the usual, ‘ if you don’t know the lyrics stop singing the song and making up dance routines like you own it’. Yes, it’s true I have an inability to remember all the lyrics to a song and still continue to sing them with all of me  as if I actually wrote the songs myself. However, this is different. The log I am referring  to is the traditional Tio de Nadal. The faint hearted or those who are not a fan of toilet humour may want to turn away now, shut their laptops or just read on anyway. The log is commonly known as Caga Tio which can be translated as, ‘ shit log’. He is what Santa is to our children.

Caga Tio, was originally just a log of wood but with time has transformed into a snazzy log who is a little less rough around the edges, a reformed character. A pair of eyes with eyebrows to match, a rounded nose and a dazzling smile later and you have a modern Caga Tio. He usually enters the Catalan household on the 8^th of December  ( the day of immaculate conception) until the 24^th or 25^th of December. Caga Tio is well looked after unlike our Santa who gets at best a few cookies and night cap for the chimney hopping. He is covered with a blanket so that he doesn’t get cold and also fed turron as well as orange peel every evening. He does, after all, need his strength for the big delivery day. The general idea is the more they feed him, the more he will poop out.

In order to aid his digestive flow on the 24^th or 25^th of December one would hit him with a stick and would poop out Christmas goods for children. The harder he is hit, the better the goods! So, the kids (or me in this case) hit the caga tio with a stick and sing a little song. The general gist of the song is that Caga Tio should poop out very good turron and not salty fish. Wise words I’d say. After hitting Caga Tio they look under the blanket to see what Caga tio left for them!

Caga Tio is ready to do the deed!

Oh Hello, Christmas surprise!

My next post will be about the famous, ‘Caganer’ in Catalonia, a traditional character in nativity plays who is constanly squatting and doing a number two. I’ll leave you with that thought.

I hope you had a wonderful, wonderful Christmas and have a fantastic new year!