We had a do-over of rained-out Carnaval a few days ago, moments after a hailstorm. First the children paraded around the village, picking up parents and stragglers as they went, confetti flying everywhere.
We had been wondering what a petassou was for many weeks -- it had been mentioned in notes home from school several times but wasn't in our dictionary. And had we been forced to guess, I don't think "octopus dressed in old clothes and stuffed with hay" would have made the top ten.
Each class sang a song or two, and then began making as much racket as possible, shaking plastic soda bottle with shredded ends and other homemade noisemakers, and yelling "Feu! Feu! Petassou!" (Burn! Burn! Petassou!) The ritual is that the petassou takes on all the bad deeds of the entire year, goes through a trial, and is burned so that the village and its people are purified for the coming year. The costumes and masks allowed everyone, of every class, to participate, so that the lowliest worker could party with the aristocrat.
Have I mentioned I love it here?
