First, one more Semana Santa post. The Thursday and Friday before Easter are Holy Thursday and Good Friday, although, they’re called something slightly different in Spanish that I've already forgotten. Holy Thursday in San Miguel is, you’ll be shocked to hear, a big party. They closed a lot of the streets downtown after dusk, and there were tons of tents set up with people selling food and drink. All of the churches set up big beautiful altars, and people go from church to church looking at them. Supposedly, if you visit 7 churches on Holy Thursday you are guaranteed to avoid Purgatory -- kind of a spiritual Get Out of Jail Free card, I guess. We didn’t actually manage to visit 7 churches, but I suspect that you probably have to be Catholic as part of the deal. Amy wasn’t feeling well, so Indigo and I went alone. She was surprisingly fascinated by looking at the altars (even though, unlike the Thursday before, no one was giving out ice cream), and didn’t even mind that it was really crowded. We went to 4 or 5 churches, skipping the ones with the longest lines to get in. Indigo has become very interested in Jesus -- she particularly likes it when He is dripping with blood. She enjoys counting his “owies,” the gruesome little thing that she is. Anyway, here are some of the altars we saw:
However, the highlight of the evening, from Indigo’s point of view, was this:
On Good Friday, the activity was a "Procession of the Priests," which is basically another dress-up parade, complete with Romans on the church roof:
Unfortunately, we only got to see a little bit of it, because Indigo had a major meltdown while we were waiting for the parade to get to us and we had to drag her home, kicking and screaming. Aren't toddlers great? Anyway, here's a couple of images of the parade:
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