As you probably know by now, Abmar and I are from Brazil. And back in our country we have different popular celebrations and holidays. And one of the most popular of these celebrations is Festa Junina (Portuguese pronunciation: [ˈfɛstɐ ʒuˈninɐ]). Throughout the month of June, people around the country celebrate the harvest and give thanks to three catholic saints: St. Anthony (13th), St. Peter (29th) and, the most popular, St. John (23rd). The festivities are filled with bonfires, traditional music, dance, food, and costumes. It’s literally a month’s worth of festivities.
In this post you’ll get to know a little bit about festa junina and how we made a celebration at our place trying to reproduce the tradition as much as we could.
The origin
Festa Junina or the June Festival, is a Catholic tradition that was introduced to Brazilians during the country’s colonization by Portugal (from 1500 to 1822). Despite its religious origins, the emphasis of Festa Junina is on creating large social gatherings in small and large cities.
How’s festa junina celebrated?
The harvest – specially corn – and the rain – specially on the northeastern region – are central themes of the festivities. The decor and the costumes take on a rural, typical countryside inspired theme, using images of scarecrows and objects made out of straw. Music and dancing are, of course, also important parts of the celebration: the typical group dance is called quadrilha, danced to the musical genre called: forró.
Festa Junina is a family-friendly celebration. Families like to get together and spend sometime together celebrating it. Also, most schools host events for the kids and their parents. At family reunion or at school parties, you’ll find children playing typical games such as catching prizes with a fishing rod, running three-legged races, and participating in ring tosses. Big table or small tents are assembled with lots of traditional food and most parties will include a bonfire.
Decor and clothing
Decoration is essential to a festa junina. it reinforces the lively, colorful and rustic atmosphere of the theme. Among many materials used, the most popular are straw, colored paper, fabric scraps, string, satin ribbons, printed images of saints and others.
Pennant flagare a must, they help to characterize the party. Paper balloons, straw dolls and hats, plaid fabric and corncobs complete the decor.
The typical costumes of Festa Junina are inspired by a vintage rural fashion, kind of an American Western style. Denin shorts and pants, plaid (checkered) shirts and colorful dresses, boots and hats are some of the pieces commonly used. Girls braid their hair and paint freckles across their cheeks, but almost everyone dresses up to some degree during the festivities.
Dancing and Music
The dance of the Festa Junina is the quadrilha (from quadrille, a dance that was fashionable in the 18th century Europe and its colonies) and it is an important component of the celebration.
It is a style of collective folk dance with a provincial vibe in which a group of about 15 couples dressed in vibrant and colorful looks dance around, while a chosen “bride and groom” act as the center of the spectacle. They enact very well rehearsed movements, and they dress to impress! Big smiles on their faces to an exciting music will keep your attention focused on them. National, regional, and local competitions will engage quadrilha groups all around the country!
Forró brings the rhythm in: a music genre that is to the northeast of Brazil what samba is to Rio de Janeiro. On its most basic form, it’s played with an accordion, a zabumba and a triangle, and it can be broken down into many sub-genres, including but not limited to baião, xaxado and arrasta-pé.
Luis Gonzaga, locally known as ‘O rei do Baião’ (king of Baião), is still a very popular artist and his songs are the ones played the most during Festa Juninas.
Food
June is the month when corn crops are harvested, and corn will be the main ingredient to most of the dishes made for festa juninas (looooooove it). But you’ll also find other types of foods associated with the festivities depending on where you are.
The most popular typical foods include:
Pamonha: paste made from sweet corn, boiled wrapped in corn husk
Canjica (or curau): corn pudding topped with cinnamon
Bolo de fubá: cake made from finely ground corn flour
Bolo de milho: moist cake made from corn kernels and coconut milk
Milho assado e cozido: corn on the cob
Cocada: shredded coconut, condensed milk and butter, served as tiles
Paçoca: crushed peanuts, sugar, cork shaped
Pé de moleque: hard toffee and peanuts, also served as tiles
In the Northeastern region, besides the food mentioned above, cassava, green beans, cuscuz (made of corn flakes) and dry meat are also very popular food.
Drinks
Drinks are also important elements in the menu of the festas juninas. Most drinks you’ll find on tents and bars during the festivities come from local producers and artisan liquor makers, and they play a big part in the tradition.
Among the use drinks you’ll find in festas juninas, the most popular are:
Vinho quente: similar to mulled wine
Quentão: a hot drink made with cachaça ginger, sugar, cloves, and cinnamon
Liquor and Cachaça with spices, aged in wooden barrels
Caipirinhas
Fruit mixes with cachaça and condensed milk.
Best places to enjoy Festa Junina in Brazil
Like Carnival, some cities have big festivities and events and are known for it . The largest of all the celebrations takes place in Campina Grande (my hometown ❤), in the state of Paraíba, and in Caruaru, in the state of Pernambuco. Both cities are located in the Northeast. Each city attracts millions of visitors each year.
Campina Grande has a large cultural agenda during the month of June including the festival known as the world’s largest Saint John’s Festival. The festival takes place in Downtown Campina Grande in a space called Parque do Povo (People’s Park), where you’ll find lots of things to do and see. There you can watch the quadrilhas, enjoy concerts of many artists of different styles (not only forró), visit restaurants and bars, try lots of traditional food and drinks, and watch fireworks.
Besides the party that happens at the Parque do Povo, you can find many other activities around the city. You can visit museums, a temporary mall where local artisans sell their products, do a tour around the city by bus, or catch a train where musicians play forró throughout a 40 minutes ride to a neighbor city. You can also drive to small towns around Campina Grande where you can visit factories of cachaça and get to know more about the local culture.
Although Parque do Povo is the main hub for musical activities, many other venues around the city host big concerts with renowned artists through the month of June, like Vila Forró, Spazzio, Sítio São João, etc.
This is literally a place to visit during Festas Juninas to get to know more about the roots of Brazilian culture!
How we celebrated Festa Junina in 2020
We were born and raised in the Northeastern region of Brazil, where festa junina has its roots and is most celebrated, and now that we’re living in Seattle we feel most homesick around the month of June. So, last year (again, because COVID) of course, all celebrations were cancelled and we couldn’t go to Brazil. So we decided to create our own São João Party tradition in Seattle (hahaha).
Although the nostalgia was hitting hard, we weren’t willing to blow our quarantine by inviting people over for a festa junina at home. However, the new summer guidelines released by the state around June that year made us a bit more comfortable to move ahead with a small gathering for which eventually became our “friend bubble” during the pandemic.
Once a decision was made, we quickly realized that it wouldn’t be easy to find the items to be used on the decor, so we had to look for alternatives. Since the decorations for festa junina are really colorful and rely on plaid patterns, we ordered some colored pennant flags, some straw hats at Amazon, and used a picnic towel to help to set the decor. We bought steel rods from Home Depot, tied them to our deck rails and hung our pennant flags off of them.
As for food, we decided to make all corn-based dishes (cakes, pamonha, canjica) from scratch following the recipes of our grandmas, which brought lots of memories back. It was a very emotional moment for us. Some tears were shed 🙂
For drinks we took some shots of a very good barrel aged cachaça we brought from Brazil: Matuta – born and raised in Paraíba, just like us 🙂 We made lemon and strawberry caipirinhas, because why not?!?
Oh! and a playlist with lots of traditional forró was on 😀
We didn’t use disposable utensils as it was a small get together, and we had all cups labeled due to covid. That was also a great opportunity to avoid the extra garbage.
It was a time of fun and nostalgia, and of course, we cried a few times. Being away from home for this long now is tough, but makes us value our own culture a lot more. For us, going back to Brazil has become about strengthening these ties and celebrating that culture!
I hope you liked this post! And if you’re planning to visit Brazil around June, you should stop by and enjoy the famous festas juninas to experience this unique folk festival together with the locals.
And while I’m writing this post, we’re getting ready to celebrate our second festa junina in Seattle. Remember, it’s a tradition now 😀
Viva São João!!!!
Xoxo,
Day ❤