It's in moments like these that my love for dictionaries knows no end. Today is Epiphany Day. Here's what I found for the definition of epiphany :

epiphany |iˈpifənē| noun ( pl. -nies) (also Epiphany) the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles as represented by the Magi (Matthew 2:1–12).
• the festival commemorating this on January 6.
• a manifestation of a divine or supernatural being.
• a moment of sudden revelation or insight.

DERIVATIVES epiphanic |ˌepəˈfanik| adjective

ORIGIN Middle English : from Greek epiphainein ‘reveal.’ The sense relating to the Christian festival is via Old French epiphanie and ecclesiastical Latin epiphania.

Now, I've repeatedly said here how even though I am an atheist, I am strongly attached to many of the catholic rites I grew up with. This has to do with what Joseph Campbell called The Power of Myth. I love mythologies, I love the stories humans have created and propagated through millennia in order to justify our existence.

I've been missing "Navidad en Puerto Rico" for a long time. It is the perfect social expression of our mulatto culture and mythologies and it's nothing, and I mean, nothing like Christmas in New York or anywhere in the United States.

In Puerto Rico we call today El Día de los Reyes Magos. It's the day catholics all around the world use to commemorate the Three Wise Men's visitation of the baby Jesus in manger in the middle of nowhere in Bethlehem. That's where the "manifestation of a divine or supernatural being" comes into play on this day.

On this day we kind of do what anglos do with Santa Claus. On the evening of the 5th, kids gather grass and water dishes for the three kings' horses. Parents put together candy with a little "ofrenda" of rum. "The magic revelation" happens when the kids go to sleep.

My parents loved to get their Reyes Magos on and would go as far as get coconuts and, in an unironic Monty Pythonesque moment, clopclopclop their way around the house while scattering the grass, emptying the bowls full of water and washing down a coconut candy or two with the "ofrenda" they had left out for themselves.

I tried doing the same for my kids but it just doesn't work out the same. For one, all the kids in Puerto Rico wait eagerly for Los Reyes Magos. Here in New York? Not so much. Not even american catholics celebrate the day!

Yet what I love and miss about los Reyes Magos is that it marks the half-point of our Christmas festivities.

Yes people, we Puerto Ricans have to do things differently, especially if it involves partying. In Puerto Rico we don't have 12 days of Christmas. We have 22 days.

Christams in Puerto Rico starts on the eve of the 24th. We have some gifts on the 25th but we spend most of the time between the 24th and the 31st in parrandas or our own special flavor of caroling; which involve "asaltos" or, as you suspect by the cognate, assaults. Parrandas are merry assaults on friends and neighbors for food and booze. The carolers bring the music, songs and dirty jokes.

Then there's New Years Eve with what seemed like a frigging endless mass back in the old days. If you play it new school, you go to a party at a hotel or a friends house. No matter what, if you tend more to the Spanish side of tradition you get the grapes, cava white wine and bells for eating, drinking and ringing in the New Year. If you tend more to the African or crypto-semitic side of things, you get your brooms, lots of buckets of water, petardos and rum. You gotta sweep, wash away the old year while announcing with firecrakers the new year and celebrating it all with a good dose of rum.

Yet, because we're Puerto Ricans, our already long 14 days of Christmas are extended by another 8 days with Las Octavitas.

Yes, we Puerto Ricans have 8 more days of Christmas that end, and I swear to blog I am not making this up, on the first day of Puerto Rico's true version of Mardi Gras or carnaval, Las Fiestas de San Sebastián. Which means, that Puerto Rico is the first country in the Americas to celebrate carnaval waaaaay before Lent.

Did I say we Puerto Ricans know how to throw a Christmas party?

When Christmas comes, I wish I weren't in this country at all. The United States is too puritan a country to be truly christic in the Greco-Roman, bacchic, pantheistic and pagan slice of Christian Catholicism that I grew to love and hate.

It's not that gringos don't know how to party, it's just that the culture is not about carnival. At all. I joked the other day that United Statians are copying all the bad habits of South American cultures : They're repeating the banana republicanism, the state-sponsored fascism, the secret prisons, cryptic torturing, disappeared dissidents, nepotistic political dynasties and squashing of all forms of creativity as dissent. Yet they are not adopting our penchant for holidays, midday siestas or socially condoned debauchery of carnaval.

Nope. This frigging country can't seem to get it together when it comes to partying a month long for the holidays. And no, your turkey day doesn't count. We don't get gifts on Thanksgiving Day. That's the whole point of any Puerto Rican Christmases, you get to rock on and double dip on the loot.

Of which I had a little epiphany : The blogosphere needs more of the cowbell that is Puerto Rico.

Time and space are different in the island. So are all the definitions of politics. I mean, in the island people roll their eyes as to what americans call "the left". All the -isms are defined differently because our history and our socio-political condition has defined them differently.

We (and when I mean "we" I really mean an egotistical "I") need more bochinche, bachata and bembé and every other form of exuberance and abundance served Puerto Rican-style. I guess I am getting old because I have a sudden and deep longing for the island and an unquenching need to get back to my roots.

So let me not call this a resolution but a reckoning. A reckoning with the sudden revelation I've had on this Día de los Reyes Magos: That it is up to me to bring forth and into my life the cultural divine nature of my people, my island, my Puerto Rico. That my longing for all things 'rican is a longing for fun, exuberance and abundance in community. To which I make a promise to myself and especially my children who have been complaining of late how I am not any fun these days.

I will have fun and exuberance.

I will have abundance and community.

I will have more tropics in my life, more bachata, more bembé and only the good kind of bochinche.

With more cowbell ... and certainly more Puerto Rico ...

Pre-publishing addenda
So guess what has happened :

As I was going to hit the publish button, I got a very special email. One of the first friends I ever had in Puerto Rico finds me through Facebook and asks me if I am the who he thinks I am.

The weirdest thing? I've been thinking about him for days now.

Pedro Frontera is a veterinarian in Puerto Rico. He actually moved to the little beach resort town we loved to play hookie in when we were kids. He is married with two kids and he looks almost exactly the same as I last saw him, about twenty years ago. Actually, that's not true. His hair color is darker now. Pedro had the quintessential surfer look : He had naturally bronze skin with blondish white hair. Yes, there's naturally blonde people in Puerto Rico and Pedro (along with another friend of ours, Patrick Cesamí) were some of the blondest dudes I'd ever met in my life.

Anyway, isn't it amazing!

I had two very close friends who were boys. I don't know why, but I've always had more of an affinity with boys than girls. Anyhow, Pedro was one of my bestest friends in school along with Enrique Miró who lived right next door to him.

We were misfits in our own ways. I won't tell you what made us weird, let's just say that as kids we had our quirks. I guess because of that, because of our own personal weirdness we all bonded really early on.

My quirk was dyslexia. I had problems reading and writing even though I was one of the smartest kids in the school (or so I was told by the principal). Pedro and Enrique would help me out with my reading. I was always good at English (I was bilingual from very early on) and was also good at memorizing facts, especially for history class. So throughout the years we would study together and my mom, blog bless, she would make us cookies or cakes or take us out for pizza or even better, to the beach --especially the one in the town he now lives.

I went to his Facebook page and lo and behold he has a link to a school reunion our classmates had recently. WOW! There's people in there I hadn't even remembered for eons! I've "friended" about 20 people whom I'd lost contact for over 20 years.

These internets, amazing they are ...

I read once that we sometimes can be the biggest obstacles to ourselves. 2007 has been one hell of a year. On the one hand, I have had an extraordinary year of opportunities that look to multiply in 2008. On the other hand, I have had to contend with illness, exhaustion and general unhappiness. I've been working like a dog yet not playing at all.

Well, if there is anything to learn about a good Puerto Rican Christmas is that it's all about making the fun last as long as you can. And that's exactly what I intend to do this year. Get back to my fun loving roots.

Bring on the mojitos, bitches.

La negra is back!