Christmas

In Madeira the Christmas festivities last from the day on which the birth of Jesus is commemorated until Epiphany (dia de Reis). Throughout this time there is much merrymaking, singing and other rejoicing, which lends poetry to this lovely season of the year. Meals become more lavish, and rare is the house where carne-de-vinho-e-alhos and bolos de mel do not appear, together with other delicacies unknown during the rest of the year. The churches fill with people for Midnight Mass (missa do galo), at which the image of the Christ Child is often offered to be kissed. To complete the Christmas festivities and solemnities there are also the nativity scenes, the presépios or lapinhas, some of them truly remarkable for the richness and variety of their decoration. Not many years ago it was the custom in some parishes of Madeira to ‘tend’ the image of the Christ Child on Christmas night, that is, to carry it and dress it on a dais set up inside the church, a service always performed by a girl. We believe, however, that this custom has disappeared, as has another, which consisted of offering various produce of the land to the Christ Child on that same night. Young men and girls dressed in old-fashioned costume piously carried their offerings to the church, announcing in their songs, at times very harmonious, for whom the offerings were intended.

The old habit of devoting the whole of Christmas Day to quiet family life and celebration is tending to disappear, and the streets of the city, once deserted on that day, are today almost as busy as on the first, second and third days of the octave. Nevertheless, it is mainly during these three days, which the people continue to keep holy although the Church has dispensed them from doing so, that visits and season’s greetings take place. Among the common people these are almost always accompanied by abundant drinking, singing and other merrymaking, which go on until the dead of night. From Christmas Eve until Epiphany, bombs and squibs explode everywhere, gravely endangering not only passers-by but also those who throw them, many of whom have been the victims of their own folly and recklessness.

The custom of seeing out the old year and welcoming the new with every kind of firework, a custom not very old, is the one that most catches the attention of visitors. The city of Funchal and its outskirts offer a truly imposing and beautiful spectacle as midnight approaches on 31 December, when coloured flares are lit everywhere and thousands of rockets and shells rise into the air. With them the Madeirans celebrate the passing from one year to the next, in the hope that the year now beginning will bring them all the good fortune denied them by the one about to vanish into the abyss of time. The night of 31 December is very lively in Funchal. Large groups of revellers pass through the city on their way to various points in the surrounding area, to the sound of machetes and violas, to watch the midnight celebrations from there.

It is on 7 January, after Epiphany, that the lapinhas (Madeiran Christmas crib) are taken down and everything returns to normal. Some people, however, keep their nativity scenes set up until the 15th, the feast of St Maurus, which, in the opinion of some, is when the Christmas festivities so dear to the good people of Madeira should be considered over. See Lapinha.