Three King's Day

The January 6th, or Three Kings Day, is a huge deal in Spain. For many Spaniards it is even a bigger holiday than Christmas, and some kids only receive gifts from the Magic Kings, or Reyes Magos. Every town, village, or city have some sort of a parade to welcome the kings to town the night before. The welcome parade is a pretty big deal as well. Madrid’s was by far the biggest in all of Spain. Nathan, my brother (who was visiting) and I decided to celebrate King's Day and watch the parade. It was a pretty crazy atmosphere, there were about 100,000 people along the streets leading to the Plaza de Cibeles, ready to watch the parade!

We saw a lot of different floats, balloons, a giant marionette puppet, people dressed up in costumes, and one lady floating up and down in a ring held up by a bunch of balloons. The whole parade was pretty magical, and was a lot of fun to see the little kids' faces light up when the different things would pass by. The other awesome part about the parade was all the candy they would throw to the crowd. People constantly were making it rain candy, and it was a very sweet deal!

Finally, the Three Kings arrived, each in their own floats, lead by a processional of people dressed up and performing. Confetti shot out from the float and poured over the crowd. The Kings made their way to the center stage, and gave a speech.

The kids were going crazy, they were all so excited the Kings had arrived. The Kings announced they would be leaving soon to give out the presents. It was very cute how people welcomed the Kings, and then parents would tell their children they had to hurry home, so the Kings could deliver their presents.

After the parade, there was a huge firework show! It was very beautiful watching the fireworks light up the sky in Madrid. It was even better because they were playing the music from Jurassic Park, which was an odd choice for the holiday, but worked pretty well with the fireworks.

The next day was the actual holiday of Three Kings Day. Spanish people usually spend the day relaxing with their family, so that's what we did too! Gotta embrace the traditions!

The traditional food to eat on King’s Day is roscone. Which is a Spanish cake. It is pretty much a giant doughnut with whipped cream in the middle and gummies on the outside. Inside the cake, there is usually a king, which is good luck if you get it in your piece, and a bean, which means you have to either pay for the cake, or buy it next year. In the morning, we all tried the roscone, it wasn’t too bad once I took the weird gummies off.  I got the bean, and Nathan got the King. Hopefully he can share his good luck with me!

It has been fun celebrating all these Spanish holidays and learning new traditions. I'm blessed to be able to have these experiences, and I know that parade will be something I remember forever. I think I will start celebrating Kings Day from now on!