Re: [saligaonet] San Joao in Abu Dhabi

[Nascimen]

Dear Zelma, It was very nice to have shared with us the feast of Sao Joao in Abu Dhabi with other three families and made children and adults quite happy. You and Perviz are quite creative. Congrats! and keep the spirit going. In our young days some of the Church and village festivals were invested with unique traditions and ceremonies. On the eve of the feast of John the Baptist( 23rd June) was celebrated with great enthusiasm by the village youth. In each vaddo the boys put together a " Judeu", a strawman dressed in cast-off clothes. It symbolised Judas the traitor. The effigy was carried round the vaddo by the boys who lustily repeated a chorus which said that Saint John who paved the way for the Messiah was great as hills, Judas the betrayer was nothing better than ash. After the sunset a bonfire was lit, the effigy of Judeu was severely beaten and thrown in the fire to be reduced to ashes in a great blaze. In Saligao there was a Society of Priests known as Society of St. Peter. It almost began when Our Church of Saligao was innaugurate in the year 1873 and continued till the year Rev. Father Natividade de Souza was the Vicar of Saligao and lateFr. Albert Saldanha was Secretary and each year a priest was chosen the previous year to celebrate it on 29th of June with solemnity in the  Saligao Church and  a yearly meeting of all Saligao priests on previous day of the feast was held in the Church  premises or hall. Some priests jumped in the well of the Church and later on took part in the Agape. For this feast all  priests from saligao working in Goa and other parts of India and  even overseas used to come. They also had common breviary prayer said all together in the Church followed by the Office of the dead for souls of the priests and so on.They passed all the day in the Church and exchanged views adn greetings and shared their experiences I The feast was closed  after I became priests and had no chance to be the priest President. Some day I will write about this interesting Society of St. Peter of Saligao.That day was called  SAO JOAO of Priests by the People. All this is gone...gone...gone. I hope you have received my previous e-mail Loves to Perviz and prayers for you and family. Fr.Nascimento Mascarenhas. ----- Original Message ----- From: Zelma G DeSouza To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, June 26, 2004 4:22 PM Subject: Re: [saligaonet] San Joao in Abu Dhabi Hello Saligaokars, Belated Happy San Joao !!!  Saw couple of emails from Annette and news on the Goanet email too wishing everyone. So I decided to share a few things we did at home last thursday on San Joao. Since it was a Thursday, weekend here,  Perviz and myself decided to have some fun. We invited three families over with kids and all we told them was make sure you have a change of clothes for the children. The rest was a surprise. We got one of those artificial pools, a fairly large one for about 5 kids in the age group of 2 -8 years to fit in. We placed it in our bathroom along with some tall plants around it and filled it with water. Perviz got some colourful plastic garlands and made crowns for the children ( Kopel) and some for them to put around their necks.  All the families then gathered around the altar, we said a short prayer  ( kids were very excited by this time) and sang the San Joao Song after that. Perviz passed around in the traditional way a small little glass with some feni, and everybody said Viva San Joa !!!  as the feni went down their throats. The kids by this time were too excited for words and we gave them the green signal to JUMP !!! And there they were spalshing around in the pool, looking so cute with all the colourful flowers around them. The youngest child in there was 2 years old and the oldest, my son 8 years. We taught them the first two lines of the San Joao song and they kept singing it as as they splashed around. The food we cooked for dinner was..................Red rice, prawn curry with mango, Kismor, temperada, Pork Vindalho, Gram Ross (curry - Hindu Style), cutlets and of course the feni bottle made its rounds.  We  also had a sing song session with Perviz playing the 'Ghumat' and my daughter slapping the 'Tambourine' on her thigh.  Heh ! I did  the Dhekni too, from my good old folk dancing days. We had some karokhe music later and to top it all finally, we had the Football Fever on, with England and Portugal playing, so everyone was shouting, Viva San Joao !!! Viva Portugal !!! We had a great evening, all the four families, including us and all our kids. I wished I was in Goa that evening. That's all folks, Regards to all my Gaobhav's and Ghavbhoins and all your respective families. Zelma De Souza Abu Dhabi