Festivals

Honduras

The Holy Week of Easter (Semana Santa) is a spiritual time of the year for the predominantly Catholic population of Honduras resulting in a full week of parades, masses, traditional events, re-enactments and ceremonies. Whilst the focus of Semana Santa is Good Friday, the entire week is marked by religious processions where costumed participants carrying extravagant floats re-enact biblical events and proceed through the streets, sometimes at night and in complete silence.

Although celebrated in a similar way in Spain and Italy, Honduras gives Semana Santa its own special and vibrant twist with colourful and detailed alfrombras, or carpets, made of dyed rice, sand, saw dust and flower petals decorating the streets. Depicting biblical scenes leading up to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, these temporary artworks are created by community and school groups who are each assigned a section of pavement well in advance of the festivities. Watching their creation throughout the night before Good Friday is an experience which is almost as popular as the processions themselves, and by late afternoon on Good Friday there is a general air of festivity, with thousands of people starting to line the streets to secure the best vantage spots to view the procession.  Around sunset, the slow, methodical booming of bass drums herald the start of the procession which then sees floats slowly wind around the city’s streets with bands playing funerary pieces. The best place to see such alfombras is Tegucigalpa, Comayagua or the Honduran mountain town of Santa Rose de Copán, which is close to the Mayan Copán ruins.

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