"It's Something That The Earth Demands," Semana Santa Poetically Rendered By A Spaniard

Our Very Own Agent Roger

This past Sunday, I posted this piece, “En Route To The Store,” as Semana Santa (Holy Week) began in Spain. The comments were so varied and brightly toned.

We have one Spaniard who we know of, who I have hoped would pipe up about all this.

Roger’s comment in defense of and explaining Semana Santa for us non Spaniards, and outside of “Catholicism” really struck me, stayed with me these past days. I read it to my daughter in law and she loved it too.

“He’s Spanish and his name is Roger?” she said.

We agreed this was not possible.

Anyway, here’s the comment:

“Let me explain what you are missing here. This is popular art. The people express their aesthetic sense (always noisy and excessive) as a form of purification. A yearly catharsis. Probably, there were processions in Spain centuries before Christ. It's something that the Earth demands: the popular expression of emotions. The night is perfect and preferred for this purpose.

This Mediterranean tradition of doing weird and resonant things by night got mixed with the Christian religion. The themes of the Holy Week reverberate strongly with all the people from the Mediterranean region. Love, brotherhood, betrayal, shame, punishment, rejection, reconciliation, coming back to life.

In Northern traditions, the night is the most feared part of life. That's when the enemies attack. That's when fire is most valuable, but also most fragile. In the North, there seems to be a massive fear that the Sun will not come back tomorrow. Always night, eternal night. Only silence is appropriate with that cold emotion that culture imposes on people. But that's the North. The Boreal, the Septentrional.

The South is always different. It's Austral, and Meridional. In the South, the Sun shines mighty. In the North, the Moon takes over the mind. In the South people feel all passions at once, and differences are unimportant, for a short while. In the North, there are only differences, classifications and loneliness.

Thus, popular religious expression is very spectacular and communal in the South, but in the North, it is individual and very sober.”

—Agent Roger W.

Link to Semana Santa X video here.

(Right now, I am unable to open my own links. Can you all?)