Advent, Christmas Lights And Fairs
Christmas gets into full swing this week; in Palma, at any rate. The lights go on, and the Christmas and Kings fair spreads from the Plaça Major to its other traditional locations. The rest of Majorca will be catching up with its markets and switching-on of lights, although there isn't quite the same attention paid to, for example, Manacor's lights as there is to Palma's.
When did these lights first feature at Christmas and when did the Christmas markets originate? Neither question has an easy answer, but they are rooted in history, be this religious or with a Catalan element (or both). Where the lights are concerned, one has to take account of how Majorca views its Christmas traditions and which stem from island folklore.
The origins of the Christmas festivities are of course obvious. But Christmas Day, as it was to become, owes everything to pagan cults to do with the winter solstice. In this regard, Christmas, from a Majorcan perspective, is not dissimilar to, for instance, the celebrations of Sant Antoni in January. Those fiestas draw on ancient rituals for the rebirth of the sun, which is the same where Christmas is concerned. The Romans celebrated, in Catalan terms, "sol naixent" or "sol nou", while the 25th of December was to be a fourth century papal invention which, so it is believed, was to counteract the Roman Saturnalia festival for the god Saturn.
When Pope Julius I came to his momentous decision in the mid-fourth century, Christianity would have been established in Majorca, albeit that the process of conversion was by no means complete. But Christianity or not, Christmas illumination had nothing to do with the papal declaration. Back in the day, there were torches and there were bonfires, and these were traditions from the pagan solstice celebrations.
As things were to develop in Catalan society, including that of Majorca, illumination for Christmas became a matter for local authority permission. Which is where Advent comes into the story. Advent starts on the fourth Sunday before Christmas or the Sunday nearest to Sant Andreu (Saint Andrew, the thirtieth of November). The start of Advent marked the point at which permission for special illumination was given. The Palma lights switch-on this week is basically a contemporary take on this old Advent authorisation.
There is one aspect of Advent, in terms of Majorcan folklore, that is open to some debate. This has to do with the Advent Crown, an invention of the Lutherans in the sixteenth century. The folkloric tradition maintains that Advent represented the path from darkness to light, i.e. to the rebirth of the sun after the solstice. It further maintains that the crown is a symbolic tradition of pagan origin to prepare for the arrival of light after darkness. The folklore doesn't go so far as to suggest that there was something similar to the Advent Crown in pagan times, but there is certainly a hint of earlier rationalisation for the Lutheran notion of the crown and of the light of God coming into the world through the birth of Jesus Christ.
As to the Christmas fair, Palma's that is, there isn't - as far as I can make out - any reference as to when this may have originated. Its scheduling is loosely linked to Advent, but in the Catalan tradition, the most notable fair, historically, was that for Santa Llúcia in Barcelona. This started on the thirteenth of December, the feast day for Saint Lucy and the day which, once upon on a time, was considered to be the shortest day. The Fira de Santa Llúcia in Barcelona has definitely been going since 1786, although it probably existed before then. It's still referred to by the same name, but it now starts around the same time as Palma's. And the Palma fair, one would imagine, owes at least something to its Barcelona counterpart.
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