May 3 is an important holiday for Mexico’s Roman Catholics and a really big deal for the country’s construction workers. It is the date of Día de la Santa Cruz (Day of the Holy Cross), celebrated with great fervor in lakeshore communities as it is elsewhere across the nation.
According to Christian legend, the date commemorates the discovery of fragments of the Holy Cross by Saint Helena, mother of the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great, in the tomb where Christ was buried.
Día de la Cruz is the feast day for Mexican masons, when they customarily erect crosses festooned with crepe paper streamers and flowers at the highest point of their building sites. In Chapala, workmen carry the crosses to the San Francisco parish for a blessing at the start of the day. Construction crews gather at their workplaces for a full day of unbridled communal feasting. They shoot off bundles of skyrockets all day long, often starting at midnight.
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