Christmas in Catalonia

Hello English speaking friends. I would like to try to write some of my articles in English. For two reasons, I am willing to improve my English and I would like you to understand my blogs better.
¡I hope to do well!

Now that we are at Christmas, I would like to explain to you a little bit of the traditions of my spanish region, Catalonia.
Here we have our friend "El Tió", a trunk with little legs and a friendly face.

He arrives at each house in December, the children cover him with a blanket so that he does not get cold and they feed him every day and when the day arrives, he defecates the gifts. Yes… "defecate", you read well.

It seems silly, but it's fun. On Christmas Eve, the children beat the trunk with sticks while singing Christmas carols. Then, there are several options the children after hitting him go to another room to pray, others go to wet the stick with water or simply to continue singing Christmas carols, the question is to leave the room so that the elderly can put the gifts and candy under the blanket. That's why we say "El Tió" defecates! because the gifts and candies come out from behind. It's crazy, isn’t it? But children love it, and we enjoy seeing them.

Another of our traditions is the invisible friend. We write our names on a piece of paper and mix them, each one of us takes a piece of paper and you have to make a gift to the person you have on your paper, and we use to put them under "the tió". Thus, no child can say "he has not defecated you anything". It has happened before :,( We put some clue inside the gift, so that the person can guess who is his invisible friend.
We also celebrate the day of Sant Esteve. It's December 26th. Only in Catalonia is a holiday, and this day is celebrated with people who could not attend Christmas day. This day is a tradition to eat cannelloni, its filling is the leftovers of Christmas day. It is delicious. I love it.

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Santa Claus we do not celebrate it that much, here we have the three King mages: Melchior, Gaspar and Baltasar. To me up to this day, it is still not clear to me who is who, hahaha!
On January 5th, it is the night that the kings arrive. And the children go out with their lanterns. They say that formerly children went to the mountain or to the beach the night before kings with their lanterns to indicate the way to the three kings.
When I was little, we made the lanterns by hand, with paper and cardboard. But over the years this has been lost, and now in any store you can buy different sizes, shapes and colors.
But in my house, we like handcrafts, so this year we are making our lanterns, and I will try to have my 4-year-old daughter to follow the tradition and make her own lantern.

It is the first Christmas that my daughter is aware of everything and is excited about everything, I love explaining the stories that I explained as a child, decorating the tree and see his face illuminated to know that in a short time she will wake up and see the full house of gifts.

I hope you like our traditions. I really think this year I will enjoy them like when I was little.
I love Christmas and more now with my little girl.
Merry Christmas to all friends. Happy Holidays.

                          JAYJES16