by Ernest Barteldes
The month of June marks the end of
the fall harvest and the beginning of winter in the
greater part of South America. For the ever-festive
Brazilians, the month represents the time to stop and
give thanks to the three saints most associated with the
rural areas of Brazil – Saint John The Baptist, Saint
Peter (the Patron Saint of The Fishermen) Saint Anthony,
a tradition inherited from their Portuguese colonizers,
who often celebrated Midsummer festivals in honor of
those saints.
In addition to Thanksgiving masses
that take place around the country, many areas also
celebrate the season with the untranslatable "Arraial"
where revelers don typical costumes that include
checkered shirts, straw hats and suspenders for men and
cotton dresses, pigtails and painted-on freckles for
women around the theme of a mock shotgun wedding (the
"bride" usually wears a fake pregnant belly,, and the
groom is forced into the "church" flanked by the girl's
relatives, who actually carry hunting guns in case he
tries to "escape") that ends with a lively "quadrilha,"
a highly improvised square dance to which everyone is
invited to participate.
This event is more popular in the
northeastern part of the country, where the Festa
Junina (June Festival) is as important as the
four-day smorgasbord of Carnaval in the Summer. In the
city of Caruaru, Pernambuco (about 120 miles from the
state's capital, Recife), revelers dance throughout the
night, leaving the festival grounds only when the sun
comes up.
In observation of this tradition, the
Brazilian community at The Church of Our Lady of Pompeii
in Greenwich Village (which meets for
Portuguese-language mass on Sundays at 1:30 PM)
