April 8, 2011
Quinceañera: Three princesses at Nativity
Top: Diana Diaz and Rosita Cardenas are seen at Mass. Bottom: Denise Fregoso, one of the three young women honored at Nativity Church in Evansville, is seen in this photograph. (Message photos courtesy Abraham Brown) Click for a larger version.
Editor’s note: The following article was submitted by Abraham Brown, youth minister at Nativity Church, Evansville.
During the last weekend of March we celebrated the transition from girls to women, the “Quinceañera” of Diana Diaz, Rosita Cardenas and Denise Fregoso with two beautiful liturgies. The girls are the daughters of three of our most active families in the parish.
Every Sunday Diana and her parents, Clementino and Oliva, sing at the Spanish Mass as members of the Spanish choir.
Rosita is our star altar server and Esperanza, her mother, is the welcoming smile that greets our Hispanic families at our noon Mass.
The Fregosos are one of the first Hispanic families that joined Nativity eight years ago.
With these Quinceañeras we celebrated both the girls fifteenth birthday and the initialization of their participation as adults in appropriate social events. The Quinceañera is also a thanksgiving event and pre-paration for the new challenges life has for them.
The Quinceañera is a highly celebrated tradition among Latino Catholics in the United States. It is almost a given that the Spanish conquerors brought the tradition to Mexico, but the celebration as it is today is a Christian adaptation of the Aztec Ceremony of Woman.
Even before the Spanish Conquest, the Aztecs celebrated their girls reaching womanhood. In such ceremony, other than the banquet and religious presentation, the mothers gave advice to their daughters, exhorting them for good behavior. The conquerors took the pagan celebration adapting it to their faith as they did with other ceremonies in an effort to catholicize the Aztecs. The Aztec dance was replaced by a waltz and the temple by the Christian altar.
Father Henry Kuykendall offered a beautiful blessing and a very illustrative homily for the Quinceañeras, explaining to them how this celebration is observed in other cultures.
A very emotional moment came when the Quinceañeras offered a Consecration Prayer to our Blessed Mother and presented flower bouquets to show their gratitude to Our Lady of Guadalupe.
After the Mass, a reception was held that included a banquet with Mexican food and a dance in honor of the Quinceañera. A special Waltz was the highlight of the reception and very emotive words from their parents.
All three looked like Princesses! Congratulations!