Until a few decades ago, the liturgical season of Christmas ended with the feast of Candlemas. The popular saying still reminds us: "Until the Purification, Easter is Easter". Until that day, some feasts followed one another, such as the feast of the Sweet Name of Jesus, traditionally celebrated on the Sunday after the octave of Epiphany, until Rome fixed its feast on the second Sunday after the Epiphany.

In the same way, Advent has been sprinkled, throughout the month of December, with some celebrations that advocate the imminent coming of the Messiah, although most of them have fallen into oblivion, at least with the contents and forms they had in the past.

The feast of St. Nicholas

In most of the Spanish cathedrals, of course in Pamplona, the feast of the bishop was celebrated on the day of Innocents. At the beginning of the month, on the day of St. Nicholas, one of the choir bishops was chosen to exercise jurisdiction during the 28th. Of such a custom, generalized in all the Peninsula, the biographer of fray Hernando de Talavera, first archbishop of Granada, gives us account when he affirms that in all the cathedrals of century XVI a bishop was elected the day of San Nicolas, whose dignity lasted until the day of Innocents: in which changing the offices of the greater ones by the smaller ones, commanding these and obeying those...., when the day of Innocents arrived, the bishop was taken from his high school to the choir, dressed as a pontifical, and accompanied by the other officials, who with their robes and surplices represented the new dean and chapter of the church, and the dignities and canons served as chaplains and servants of the bishop...".

Echoes of those festivities celebrated by altar boys and choir boys of churches and cathedrals are some characters of Christmas folklore, interpreted by some as a reason for mockery and, by others, as a pious representation. A good example of this is the so-called "obispillo" of St. Nicholas Day, which is still staged in five towns in Navarre, which speak of a representation of the world upside down, perfectly fit in the carnival spirit of the winter holidays. The celebration, according to Jimeno Jurío, was especially colorful in Roncal, where the bishop, with his entourage, was accompanied by the municipal regiment, dressed in the traditional costume.

The cult of St. Nicholas was not as important in Navarre as that of other saints, in fact, there were barely average dozen parishes dedicated to him and some Shrine of Our Lady of Fair Love like the one in Tafalla, in the neighborhood of La Peña. However, the issue of paintings and sculptures is remarkable, with outstanding examples of all styles, from Gothic to Baroque. Iconographically, Saint Nicholas is represented with a beautiful pluvial cape and the episcopal insignia: mitre and crosier. At his feet usually appear three children in the salt cellar, which are part of his best known attributes. As it is known, the legend of the saint includes the fact of the miraculous salvation of the three infants that an evil butcher had in the salt cellar, to sell them as pork.

The conference

Among the traditional convent and family devotions were the Jornaditas, a kind of novena in preparation for Christmas. In Mexico they are still celebrated with great pomp, around a procession with luminaries that departs from the church with the images of Mary and Joseph and a donkey with an angel. Along the way, the pilgrims ask for lodging for such unique pilgrims again and again, until finally a door is opened. We know of several editions for the internship of the conference or Posaditas, and we know of the staging with images of St. Joseph and the Virgin in search of lodging.

Currently in Pamplona, only the Discalced Carmelites of Salsipuedes Street continue to celebrate the conference, which begins on December 16 and ends on the 24th, with the reading of some considerations on the conference that Joseph and Mary made from Nazareth to Bethlehem.

The main staging is carried out by the daughters of Santa Teresa, at dusk on the 23rd, when the community with lighted candles and singing goes to one of the stands, where the delicate eighteenth-century sculptures of the pilgrims, that is, Mary and Joseph, are located. The lyricsof the songs read: "Saint Joseph who accompanies the Virgin / with loving sighs / says weeping: / Alas for my life / my sweet glory, / of my report, /adored garment, / Alas what I feel seeing you / so tired!...". In the last stanza, the prioress takes the two images and sings other couplets of the conventual tradition, one of which says: "Shepherdess Virgin / Glory of Bethlehem / of a Prince Mother / who is also King / Come to our Valleys / of Lebanon come / You will be crowned, / Queen of Israel¿". From that moment on, the ceremony takes on greater force, as it goes to the office of the Saint, and the cells of the prioress and all the nuns, where each one prays, recites a poem or sings a carol to the visitors. At the end, in the choir, the corresponding exercise of the conference is carried out.

With this simple, symbolically charged story, it is not difficult to take us back to the cold, brick-lined corridors of the old convent at place del Castillo, for the tradition is still very strong. Then and now it was a matter of preparing the ways of Christmas, to delight the heart and feelings in the coming of the Saviour.

The Virgin of Hope

The Virgen de la Esperanza or Virgen de la O is celebrated on December 18 and is a Marian invocation associated with the Advent or expectation of the Nativity of Christ, when the Virgin was pregnant. The reason for the name "O" is the admiring exclamation "Oh" that appears in the seven stanzas of the Vespers that precede Christmas, between the 17th and 23rd. Each antiphon is one of the names of Christ, one of his attributes mentioned in the Scriptures. On 17:O Sapientia (Wisdom), 18:O Adonai (one of the names of God in Hebrew: my Lord), 19:O Radix Jesse (Root of Jesse), 20:O Clavis David (Key of David), 21:O Oriens (Dawn), 22:O Rex Gentium (King of the Nations) and 23:O Emmanuel (God with us). The first letters of the titles read in reverse form the Latin acrostic "Ero Cras," meaning "Tomorrow, I will come," and reflect the topic of the antiphons.

In the cathedral of Pamplona, the music, that is to say the voices and instruments, accompanied this official document. From the notes of the cathedral ceremonialist of the last third of the XIX century, we know that during the first Vespers of the Expectation the antiphon O Sapientia is intoned by the Dean, for which the master of ceremonies accompanies him from his chair to the lectern, and after the whole antiphon has been sung, he accompanies him again to the stairs of the choir upstairs. The following six days the O's are sung by the dignitaries or older canons, upon the invitation of the Dean or president of the choir, which he does through the master of ceremonies". In the convents, the nuns carried a kind of banner with the "O" ornamented with different motifs and the letters of the beginning of the antiphon corresponding to each day.

The Virgin of Hope has some exquisite representations belonging to the Gothic period. Let us remember the stone sculpture of the basilica of the Virgen de la O in Pamplona, in the parish of San Lorenzo, in the neighborhood of Sandu Andía, from the convent of La Merced. It had a confraternity and a hospital. Bishop Martín de Zalba granted indulgences to those who helped his Building in 1384. In the second half of the 18th century, the church was enlarged and demolished in 1987, and a new one was built that hardly harmonizes with its surroundings.

A magnificent pictorial example is the main panel of the altarpiece of the Villaespesa chapel in the cathedral of Tudela, a 1412 work by the Zaragozan painter Bonanat Zaortiga. In this case, the image of the large, pregnant Virgin is surrounded by angels holding a cloth in the background, while the patrons of the chapel, Chancellor Villaespesa and his wife Doña Isabel de Ujué, of small size, pray at her feet.

During the 16th century we have documented some examples with typologies dependent on the apocalyptic Virgin, such as the sculpture that Domingo de Segura made for Obanos in 1554, with the sun in the Virgin's belly. In the Baroque period a Marian temple was built in Valtierra under the advocation of the Virgen de la Esperanza, which has a rich Baroque altarpiece and an exceptional dressing room with decorative Baroque paintings. Other chapels of the same dedication are in Ugar and Ciriza. The only parish of the Expectation of Our Lady is in Munárriz.