Carnival is celebrated on the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday in La Antigua Guatemala. The form of celebration is break colourful eggshells, cascarones, on the heads of friends and family members. These hand-painted cascarones are filled with home-made confetti and other such things as flour. By the end of the day, kids forego the eggshells altogether … Read more
Here’s your illustrated Spanish word of the day: Cascarón for eggshell. What do we do with cascarones? Well, young people (i.e. children and/or children at heart) smash them on the heads of unsuspected victims. Since there is usually a costume party involved with Carnival you don’t know who your victimizer is. The confetti gets inside … Read more
Here’s your Spanish word of the day: Carnaval, or meat festival, or carnival. As I have said before in previous years, the best way to explain cascarones, carnaval (carnival) and Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday) is to quote some of the AntiguaDailyPhoto readers. Manolo: Cascarones are literally egg shells. So, as some have said, weeks in … Read more
If case you missed it, yesterday, February 2, was Día de la Candelaria. As I have explained before, around Antigua Guatemala, many people keep their Nacimientos [Nativity scenes] and Christmas decorations until the 2nd of February, Día de la Candelaria (Candlemas), which incidentally is Groundhog Day in the United States. Now, we begin the countdown … Read more
Ordinarily, I begin by asking readers to recall their earliest memories to provide a context for corpocratic historians of the future… Could you describe this annual “Carnival” ceremony? The Tuesday before Ash Wednesday was the culmination of carnival, a festive season which occurred immediately before Lent, in the territory then known as Guatemala, where these … Read more
As published last year, these colorful Guatemalan cascarones [eggshells] filled with confetti are known as cascarones de carnaval [carnival] and they mark the arrival of carnaval and then Ash Wednesday (Miércoles de ceniza), which is the first day of Lent (Cuaresma). That’s right folks, on Wednesday we will begin the count down to The World … Read more
In recent years there have been a Venetian style carnival celebration as part of a fund-raiser. I am not sure they had the fund-raiser this year, but the Venetian style costumes and masks were seen through out Antigua Guatemala. These fancy dresses and masks, of course, are far, far away from the traditional Guatemalan carnival … Read more
These colorful Guatemalan cascarones [eggshells] filled with confetti are known as cascarones de carnaval [carnival] and they mark the arrival of carnaval and then Ash Wednesday (Miércoles de ceniza), which is the first day of Lent (Cuaresma). That’s right folks, on Wednesday we will begin the count down to The World Famous Holy Week in … Read more
These colorful Guatemalan eggshells filled with confetti are known as cascarones and are the sure sign that marks the arrival of carvinal and then Ash Wednesday (Miércoles de ceniza), which is the first day of Lent (Cuaresma) which in 2009 will be celebrated on February 25th. That’s right folks, on Wednesday 25th we will begin … Read more
Cascarones are empty eggshells that are filled with pica-pica paper confetti and then covered up with another piece of papel china (tissue paper) and finally painted in colorful ways; like everything else in Guatemala. The final painted eggshells are reserved for the Carnaval as it is known carnival in Spanish which is the ‘Sad Tuesday’ before Ash Wednesday; why ‘Sad Tuesday’?, well carnival means “farewell to meat”, you can only be sad if you are going to keep a vegetarian lent. 😉