Day 54 - Like Water for Chocolate

I love learning Spanish! It's such a beautiful language. On the surface, it seems pretty easy, but if you dig just a tad deeper, you realize that is it NOT a simple language at all. There are 14 tenses, plus 3 non-temporal verb forms. That doesn't seem too bad in comparison to English, that has 12 tenses; however, every verb in Spanish conjugates in 5 (Mexican) or 6 (Spanish Spanish) forms: I, you familiar, he/she/(you formal), we, you formal, they. It's a nightmare to learn, but so gorgeous to appreciate! This language is very particular in its intricacy of expression: every little situation calls for a very specific "solution". Narration, for example, has its own tense. There are 3 genders. At least there are no declensions, that's a relief.

Anyway, as usual, during my Spanish class today we discussed a series of cool things. This time our conversation hovered over various Mexican wedding and family traditions. Here are the two that impressed me the most:

WEDDING "DOLLAR DANCE". Male guests ask for permission from the groom to dance with his bride by “paying” for the privilege and the female guests pay for the privilege to dance with the groom. The guests form one line for the groom and one line for the bride, usually the best man and maid of honor are at the head of each respective line to help collect the money. The father of the bride would lead the dance by pinning money on her dress, followed by the best man and groomsmen and then other male guests. On the side of the groom, his mother will reciprocate by pinning the money on his suit, followed by the maid of honor and bridesmaids and other female guests. As tradition goes, the money collected should be used by the newlyweds as extra cash for their honeymoon or to set up their household expenses. I did some additional research, and apparently the tradition originated in Poland! Normally, the bride collects more money than the groom, and in the olden times, when women didn't have the equal rights to work as hard as men (haha), this money was considered her contribution to the new family household income. The tradition was brought to the US in the beginning of the 20th century, and I think over time, as people became lazier and stopped wanting to put any extra effort in dancing, it morphed into simply sticking some money into an envelope and be done with it. Of course, the latest metamorphosis is a wedding registry.

"LIKE WATER FOR CHOCOLATE" is a novel and a very good movie, that explores this other "interesting" Mexican tradition: the youngest daughter must not marry but take care of her mother until the day she dies. When I watched this movie in NYC several months ago, I was touched by the absurdity of this traditional belief, but I never thought that it was STILL the reality. Apparently, to this day, in some small Mexican towns and villages this tradition is strongly enforced.