Mexican Lifestyles

No Mexican festivity seems complete without noisy fireworks, even the most solemn of all religious celebrations, Easter. The traditional Quema de Judas follows the celebration of the late night Misa de Gloria (Glory Mass) on Holy Saturday.  The fiery detonation of effigies representing Christ’s treacherous disciple – and by extension sinful and despised  public figures and other  powers of evil – is a deep-rooted custom embraced by popular culture for more than four centuries.  While the custom is still popular, it appears to have been more so in years gone by. Writes Dorothy Gladys Spicer in her 1937 “The Book of Festivals,” Judas “is made to look as horrible as possible. Sometimes he has a huge red nose and wears a high hat and frock coat. Coins, pasted upon his garments, represent the 30 pieces of silver for which he sold Christ. By ten o’clock Saturday morning everything is in readiness for Judas’ execution. Effigies of the traitor are suspended from roofs, balconies, lamp posts, trees, shop windows. As soon as the mass is over, fuses are lighted. Church bells peal forth.  With loud explosions the Judases are torn to shreds. The people in the plazas shout with glee.”

Discount Mexican airline Volaris will start direct flight from the Guadalajara International Airport to New York JFK from July 15, although some travelers may find the timing of the flights inconvenient.  

Flights will leave Guadalajara on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday at 5:45 p.m., arriving at JFK at 11:55 p.m. The return flights are overnight, leaving JFK on Thursday, Sunday and Tuesday at 1:25 a.m. and arriving in Guadalajara at 5:34 a.m.

At press time, the cost of flights for the first month of the new route (returning one week later) was 6,236 pesos (417 dollars). Tickets can be booked online at volaris.com.

Volaris now offers more routes than any other Mexican airline – 38 in total, to 18 domestic destinations and 20 international ones. The airline carried more than 16 million passengers last year.

Don’t waste your valuable time this Easter. Be prepared for those seasonal closedowns that can wreck the plans of unknowing foreign residents.