We Three Kings

The Christmas period is finally over. The kings arrived in the towns and ports of Mallorca on the night of the fifth, performed some adoration, distributed their presents, and yesterday was the culmination of the festive season - for another year.

Distribution of presents. Now, there's a thing. It is typical for the kings to hack around the streets dropping of gifts for children, house by house. Well, this is how it happens in many instances, such as in Muro. Not for the Mallorcans a Santa's grotto, the kings get out and about, put in some legwork, shielding themselves from the rain. It's the tradition, this doling out of gifts. But is it? It's the tradition, the kings parades, such as the one from the port in Alcúdia to the old town. But is it? If Christmas, Santa and presents were largely a Victorian invention in Britain, so the "traditions" of the kings in Mallorca are mainly a thing of the last century. There were "kings" long before, but not in the sense that they have become kings now, taking part in elaborate processions and handing out some Christmas bounty to the young of the towns.

"The Diario" ran a fascinating piece yesterday. The paper spoke to various oldsters in different towns on the island, asking them to recall what the "kings" were like when they were small, back in the 1920s and 1930s. A very different picture to today's emerges from these memories. Not everywhere had a "kings" party or parade, far from it. One chap recalls that at home there was little by way of celebration and that he was an adult when he first witnessed a kings parade and anything like present-giving. He's 84 now, so it would not have been until the 1940s perhaps that there was something resembling the current-day activities, and even then the gifts amounted to little more than a couple of oranges or a chocolate sweet. Others have similar recollections. A gift might have been an ensaimada, if they were lucky, or unlucky as the case may be - depends whether you like lard and sugar. Not everyone was even that lucky. Some of those spoken to don't remember there ever being any presents.

The gifts that today's kings hand out may still not be that grand - they don't stretch to a Wii or a new mobile for every kid in the neighbourhood, at least one hopes not - but they are certainly more grand and there are far more of them. Which does rather beg a question. Who pays for them? The town halls presumably. There may not be the gross commercialism of Christmas in Mallorca by comparison with elsewhere, but Christmas - and the Kings - still come at a price and with a materialistic element that is in keeping with a contemporary culture, thus removed from the so-called tradition, even if this tradition is not quite as it seems.


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