ZozoBra before it was burnd up real good ...Sept 2008
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Zozobra ("Old Man Gloom") is the name of a giant marionette effigy which is built and burned every autumn during Fiestas de Santa Fe in Santa Fe, New Mexico, usually during the second week of September. As his name suggests, he embodies gloom; by burning him, people destroy the worries and troubles of the previous year in the flames. Anyone with gloom that they need to get rid of can come by the offices of the Santa Fe Reporter in the weeks leading up to the burn to drop off slips of paper with personal gloom written on them. Many people put legal papers in the gloom box as well. At the festival the papers from the gloom box are placed at Zozobra's feet to be burned alongside him.
Fiestas de Santa Fe has been held since 1712 to celebrate the Spanish retaking of the city in 1692 by Don Diego de Vargas from the Pueblo tribes who had occupied the city since the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. The burning of Zozobra dates from 1924. William Howard Shuster, Jr. came up with the idea of creating the effigy, also called Old Man Gloom, and ritual burning.
Today more than 40,000 people go to watch Zozobra, who stands fifty feet tall. His burning marks the start of three days of celebration that includes traditional mass at St. Francis Cathedral; a reenactment of the Entrada, when de Vargas returned to the city; a Children's Pet Parade; and the Historical/Hysterical Parade. The Kiwanis Club of Santa Fe builds Zozobra and burns the effigy at Fort Marcy Park.
A ritual is a set of actions, often thought to have symbolic value, the performance of which is usually prescribed by a religion or by the traditions of a community by religious or political laws because of the perceived efficacy of those actions[1][2]
A ritual may be performed at regular intervals, or on specific occasions, or at the discretion of individuals or communities. It may be performed by a single individual, by a group, or by the entire community; in arbitrary places, or in places especially reserved for it; either in public, in private, or before specific people. A ritual may be restricted to a certain subset of the community, and may enable or underscore the passage between religious or social states.
The purposes of rituals are varied; they include compliance with religious obligations or ideals, satisfaction of spiritual or emotional needs of the practitioners, strengthening of social bonds, demonstration of respect or submission, stating one's affiliation, obtaining social acceptance or approval for some event — or, sometimes, just for the pleasure of the ritual itself.
In any case, an essential feature of a ritual is that the actions and their symbolism are not arbitrarily chosen by the performers, nor dictated by logic or necessity, but either are prescribed and imposed upon the performers by some external source or are inherited unconsciously from social traditions.
someone is lighting the grill i suppose
last nite in santa fe
was the burning
of old man gloom
zozobra
the crowd was huge
but it felt
like a hannah montana concert
on nickelodeon
gloom is going up in smoke after three hours waiting for it to burn (gotta move the refrigorators)
the old dangerous ritual
once full of dark energy, alcohol and sex
has now been replaced
with the post 9-11 traditions
strickly PG 13 entertainment
sponsored by Kiwanis Club
with SWAT teams atop buildings
metal detectors, german shephards
$2 bottles of water
and a $10 admission
to complete
the conversion of the pagan
to obscene