The Christian world is in the midst of Holy Week just now, the commemoration of Christ’s trials, crucifixion and – what believers hold to be – his resurrection.
While Semana Santa is commemorated throughout the world you’d be hard put to find a place where it’s remembered with the passion and purpose it is in the Guatemalan city of Antigua.
This time of year, the predominant color in Antigua is purple – the hue representing Christ’s suffering. Men are cloaked with it, doors bedecked in it. Purple sets the tone, literally and figuratively, for the week.
While Christians commemorate the resurrection on Easter Sunday, it is Good Friday in Antigua that is almost surrealistically striking. Residents carpet the local calles in flowers, pine needles, and clover. These sweet-smelling carpets are the famous alfombras, and the patterns they form conjure the old world and the new, Mayan motifs as well as Christian. It’s a heady mixture.
Many alfombras are passed on through the ages, from generation to generation. Tradition is at the heart of Semana Santa, wherever it’s commemorated. That’s especially true in Antigua.
Visitors from throughout the world make a pilgrimage to this Guatemalan city during Holy Week. If you allow it, the experience can be dazzlingly transportive – the sights, sounds, the smells of it all cascading down the calles.
If you’re in search of a substitute for Carnival, this assuredly isn’t it. Something other than sheer revelry is at work here. Abandon yourself to it. Dump the dead weight of the every day – the workaday world, the bills and the battles. Do it if only for this moment in time. Journey to Antigua.
Story by Jerry Chandler
(Image: kinglacho)
