Parrandas de Remedios

Parrandas de Remedios began in 1820 as a priest's noisy trick to draw churchgoers to pre-dawn Aguinaldo masses, evolving by 1851 into a fixed rivalry between neighborhoods El Carmen, symbolized by the hawk, and San Salvador, symbolized by the rooster, who compete each December through elaborate plaza displays, decorated floats and fireworks, a two-hundred-year-old tradition considered one of Cuba's three principal national festivals and the model later towns' own parrandas were built on.

Parrandas de Remedios began in 1820 when a young priest, seeking to boost attendance at the pre-dawn Aguinaldo masses celebrated from December 16 to 24, paid a group of children and adolescents to raise a racket through the streets with tin cans, horns and other noisemakers to rouse sleeping neighbors toward church, an origin documented well enough that the tradition's own bicentennial celebrations have marked more than two hundred years of continuous history.