El Gordo

I bitch about Christmas quite a lot, but there are some things that I like about the Christmas season here in Catalunya. The lights on the front of buses spell Bon Nadal. (Nadal means Christmas in Catalan.) Merry Christmas written in lights on a bus in New York would not make me smile; even Feliz Navidad doesn't do it -- it just puts that stupid song in my head. (And, now I've got the stupid song in my head, dammit.) But Bon Nadal makes me think of Rafa Nadal, and that makes me smile. Also, they have this thing called a shit log (Tió de Nadal or Caga tió). It's a little log that they put stuff in (little treats like cookies or figs) starting a while before Christmas and then on Christmas Eve they beat it with a stick until the treat come out (i.e., they make it shit). And, every Catalan nativity scene has a little guy off in the corner pooping.

On the not-specifically-Catalan front, I was very disappointed today to learn that El Gordo de Navidad (gordo means fat) is not the way people here refer to Santa Claus. (I've spent years getting a kick out of calling him El Gordo de Navidad.) Turns out the Christmas fat man is actually a national lottery. I don't even know how they say Santa Claus here, and I don't care. I'm sticking with El Gordo.