This festival goes back to St. Martin, a soldier who split his cape in two halves when he met a beggar and gave it to him. The night after that he dreamt that Jesus was the same man as the beggar. “What you did to the beggar you did to me.” Jesus said to him in his dream. The children who go to the houses are like little beggars and the people who give them something are as St. Martin.
As each year we walked with little children and lanterns in a parade through our village, through a part that is not rich. There are always musicians who play the trumpets to accompany the songs that belong St. Martin. This year it was difficult to find them. My husband
The people who should hand out the sweets and the tangerine at the end of the parade had not shown up -they are from a home, it is a community event- so I helped. That was such a lovely task, to see all these little children come by, one by one, and to be able to give each of them something.