Easter in Portugal is a religious holiday. Actually, for the Christian religion Easter is the most important holiday, but in the US it seems as though it is celebrated more for the sake of finding chocolate and painting eggs. Which is not to say the Portuguese dont enjoy finding chocolate eggs or bunnies. Easter afternoon the adults, not the easter bunny, hid chocolate eggs and chocolate bars for all the "kids" (that is, everbody under 24) and we all scattered around the minimal garden area to find them. But the real events were the parades. I spent Easter in Fornos, a small and more "rural" town. We arrived on Friday and I met more of the family, there were about 40 people for dinner the last night, and toured the farm and house. The farm is not an actual farm, but more of a very large garden, built to support the household. There was also a tennis court with soccer goals and a pool, but it was far too cold to swim. There are lots of cousins who we hung out with and played games and watched movies. Saturday night at about 11:30 the first parade walked by. The whole town walks through the town with the small statue of Jesus on the cross in front. This parade was mourning the death of Jesus, so everybody dressed in black and there was no music and no noise. The next parade was in the morning before mass on Sunday. This parade is the one that we joined in on, walking through the whole town while music played and the priest read prayers.
