A Catalan Christmas

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So I know I said the last post would be the last one for a while but I found out a Christmas tradition that is too great not to share.

So today was the last day of classes for the semester and the entire class, prof and all, went out to the pub for a few drinks. As the group began to dwindle a few of us decided to go out to get some pizza for dinner. There was me, David from Ayere (the Langley of Glasgow from my understanding), Hannah from Germany and Laura a Catalan from Spain. I'll warn everyone now, if you don't want to see some vulgar language, really not all to bad but there will frequently be a swear word, don't continue. I'd usually try and keep this as family friendly as possible but it's kinda integral to the comedy and authenticity of the story.

As we talked over dinner the topic of Christmas came up and Hannah burst out laughing and told Laura to tell me and David about the "shitting tree." Now David and I thought that we had heard wrong because a) we had been talking earlier about the two girls English skills and our lack of correcting it out of politeness and b) they both have relatively strong accents and it could have easily been something else and c) because seriously who would think that someone would say "shitting tree."

As it was explained to me the Christmas tree is painted with a face by parents and the kids will feed the tree food leading up until Christmas; much in the same way that we would leave cookies out for Santa. On Christmas day the kids get sticks and beat the tree while singing a song that essentially says "shit or we'll beat you some more," which apparently is quite convincing to the tree. After a sufficient beating the kids are escorted out of the room and the parents will call them back in by saying "I think I smell something." While the kids were out they have placed presents, that the tree has shat out, and the kids rejoice and open their, seemingly smelly, presents. And now dear reader I hear you asking, "well how do they tell when they've run out of presents?" They know that they've run out of presents when they find onions. Brilliant!

So the moral of the story is that I think we really need to import this tradition to spice up Christmas in Canada.

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