Lenten Traditions in the Campo

With the start of Lent last week also began the lead-up to perhaps the most important holiday in Nicaragua: Easter. We have heard tell of all of the special festivities that happen here during Semana Santa, or Holy Week, and we're excited to experience them. But for these 40 days before Easter, the celebrations will be a bit more solemn.

One aspect of the Lenten celebration is that at least here in San Nicolas, it is only the Catholic church that observes Lent. Tensions are always rife between the Catholic and Evangelical churches in San Nicolas, with judgments flying fast both ways. When we asked a Catholic friend about how the Evangelicals celebrate Lent, she told us with distaste, “They don't celebrate it.” When we asked an Evangelical student the same question she said self-righteously, “For Catholics, only this time of year is holy. For us, every day is holy.”

For the Lent-observing Catholics, then, these weeks before Easter are a time of moderation and quiet. Traditionally, people in this part of the Nicaraguan campo don't eat meat during Lent. People wear darker, more subdued-colored clothing (you are considered a sinner if you wear red, one friend told us) and are not allowed to play loud music or shout. If there is a storm with loud thunder and lightening during Lent, superstition has it that if you grab a pinch of ash and make a cross with it in the air, the thunder and lightening will go away.

From our observations, though, most of these traditions seem to have expired. Maybe there are older people deep in the campo who still take these principles to heart, but we haven't seen any notable decrease in hot-pink polo shirts or blasting reggaeton music in San Nicolas.

What we have noticed is a determined increase of songs relevant to Lent during masses. During the Ash Wednesday service last week, Padre Patricio blessed people by drawing a cross in holy ash on their foreheads, as a reminder of human mortality and repentance to God. This holy ash came from the burned palms of last year's Palm Sunday.

Every Friday during Lent, the Catholic church holds what is called a “Via Cruz.” A group of parishioners walks around town to different houses, singing Lenten songs, which tend to be a little sadder and slower than the typical ranchero beats of church songs here. Also, on Fridays during Lent, people don't eat meat. (This is not such a huge sacrifice, however, since it's not so often that people supplement their normal rice-and-beans diet with meat, anyway).

Though accounts differ on what constitutes typical Lenten traditions here in San Nicolas, it seems certain that Lent is a time of reflection on what it means to be human in the presence of God. During these forty days, we join the people of San Nicolas and the world in silence and prayer.