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With the arrival of the Christmas holidays each year, there are many families who celebrate the Caga Tío festival with the youngest members of the family and even some adults, although they know it, wish to join in its festive events, despite not knowing its beginnings or where it began. places it is celebrated.
Its origins occurred in rural areas, far from cities, where homes lacked heating and were heated by burning dry wood.
I don’t know if in Aragon they use another name since, in the stories about our Tió I have found him with different names: Tronca de Nadal, Tizón de Navidad, Soca de Nadal.
The families, once the logs had been burned, scattered their ashes so that their houses would be protected and the ashes would be deposited in the fields to achieve a good harvest.
This tradition with pagan airs was adopted by Catalonia and Aragon, so that a tradition began to entertain the youngest members of the family and they had a small obligation during the Christmas holidays.
The purpose of the families was to provide an incentive for the children to take care of and keep well cared for the trunk that they were given to be cared for and, if they managed to have it in perfect condition, as a reward the Tió, on Christmas Eve, He would bring them small gifts in advance of the arrival of the Three Wise Men.
The ritual began in times when religion was more followed, with the arrival of Advent (from the Latin ad-venio, which means “to come, arrive”) and which begins four Sundays before Christmas.
They looked for a thick trunk, two smaller trunks were glued on the side where the face would be drawn to simulate the feet and create a hole that would be useful for the celebration, a face was painted on the front of the legs and a barretina.
The liturgy was that, from that date on, the children had to take care of the Tió and were obliged, every night, after dinner, to approach the Tió and leave him something to eat and drink. Then they covered him with a small blanket so that he wouldn’t be cold throughout the night. Once the dinner ritual was over, they went to sleep.
At night, when they were asleep, the relatives would empty the plate and the glass so that in the morning they could verify that Uncle had had dinner and had fallen asleep and his work had not been useless (a palpable example that we are all necessary and with a small daily effort we can help others).
With the end of the civil war, the Tió festival, due to the economic crisis, lost its celebration. It was not logical to hold a pagan party to give gifts, when later the children would receive the cardboard horses, wooden constructions and pepones at the Three Kings’ party.
It was not until the 1960s that, thanks to the grandparents, the Caga Tió festival was celebrated again with the grandchildren. In most cases, after having attended the midnight mass and having had dinner, the gifts that the Tió had brought were given.
Other families delayed the delivery until just before the Christmas Day meal, a consequence of the new modernity and the dispersion of married children, who spent Christmas Eve apart and met at the meal that day.
However, Nadal’s Tió, which had begun to be a tradition linked to families during the Catalan Christmas holidays, had a great and emerging competitor: Santa Claus.
The big commercial brands saw that Santa Claus came with much more expensive gifts and that they brought them greater benefit, which is what interested them, and they forgot to promote Tió.
Each year Santa Claus starts a little earlier and already in November we are inundated with advertisements for expensive gifts that try to get us to give them without thinking about how we will pay for them.
But Tió has not died, he is still alive. If you go to one of the Christmas markets that are held throughout Catalonia, you will find at some stop the figure of the trunk with its face painted to celebrate the old family tradition of Caga Tió.
I forgot to comment for the layman how the party develops. The children are sent to a room and the different personal gifts are placed under the blanket. When the children arrive in front of the Tió, they, with a cane that has previously been provided to them, hit the trunk and, while they hit it, they sing a song. . This is one of the most used letters:
“Shit, man
almonds and nougat
don’t fall for herrings
which are too salty
nougat shit
which are better
Shit dude
almonds and nougat
if you don’t want to shit
I will give you a blow with a cane.”
The trunk is then hit and the blanket is lifted. In the beginning they started with the little ones and there were only nuts and artisan nougats; later, these were changed for more important gifts.
Logically, in the lands of Aragon the song is different and, just like in Catalonia, there are several versions.
According to some versions of historians, this family party had another very credible ending. The trunk, of course, was not so pretty and was renewed every year, since, at the end of the event, as it was at the beginning of winter, once the trunk had finished its purpose and the Christmas and Three Kings holidays were over, the family After burning the trunk, he spread its ashes around the house and the field to ward off evil spirits.
Other versions say that the ashes were kept in an urn and placed in a special place in the house to protect it from evil spirits throughout the year.
What they agreed on in both cases was that, with part of the ashes, they were sprinkled on the crops and stables, and even on top of the beds, as a ritual to promote fertility.
