Semana Santa

By Sheeba Muskaan

“Celebrate while you travel, living will get better”

Guatemala, a Central American country south of Mexico celebrates Semana Santa which is a holy week that leads to Easter. This festival is known to be exceptionally magnificent, fantastic and stupendously galvanizing. The churches, especially Latin American, keep processions and celebrations every day during this event. This event brings people to together for good purposes.  This stunning festival was introduced by the Spanish and now happens to be a reason for tourists to visit this place.

The enthralling part of this Latin Semana Santa celebration is the Alfombras. Alfombras are colourful and a path way for the procession on the streets of residents. Locals of Antigua create designs with sawdust, flowers, candles and much more that create a long carpet. During this festival the procession goes over this piece of art, crumbling every last design. Famous artists craft this path of fine and skilled work but closer to the procession. The terrain looks absolutely gorgeous and artsy gluing your eyes on the talented work the locals do during this festival.

Over a period of time this temporary creation of masterpiece has gotten better with the use of flowers, coffee, baked goods and much more. Each one is motivated to make it better and prepossessing over the years keeping competition and business in mind. The processions of this festival are very interesting as one can find costumed actors, marching bands, and people from the church congregation, who walk carrying candles, incense, flags and other things as well. One can go on from two to twelve hours covering the city. Trumpets, colourful floats and finely crafted carpets all appeal the naked eye.

The centres of the procession are usually placed with heavily decorated wooden floats that are also covered with flowers and other massive ornaments. The women and men perform separate activities during this procession throwing flower petals all along. These people experience this festival with deep feelings that usually show on their faces. The women dress in white veils and are a great view to watch and learn the traditions.

Good Friday happens to be the peak of Semana Santa and is considered to be very crowded through both night and day. The music is sombre and the statues are tremendous that are placed in the centre of the procession. During this festival there are numerous vendors for souvenirs, food and a lot more that will want to make you stay longer. This festival is like no other and experiencing it would be dream come true!