Festa Junina or Festa de São João
Translating literally, June Festivities or Saint John’s Festivals is a celebration on the months of June and July in Brazil. It originated from European midsummer celebrations and includes some similar traditions like a large bonfire (that seems to make a lot more sense in the southern hemisphere because it happens during winter months) and also a dance derived from palatial European court balls, modified and redefined with new meaning, related to popular and rural themes and paired with brazillian “forró” or country music.
Dressing up and dances
Traditionally everyone wears plaid shirts/dresses, straw hats, painted on gap tooths, very blatant blush on cheeks and lots of painted freckles, girls wear their hairs in pigtails and boys paint on moustaches and beards. This is the stereotypical exaggerated rural look, and is more common for kids to dress this way, while in parties with mostly adults it’s more common to just wear plaid shirts, a straw hat and do some make-up.
The dances are choreographed but very standard between places, with someone announcing vocal cues for specific dance steps, switching partners, doing coordinated group moves and sometimes ending in a mock wedding.
Traditional food
Now, the best part of it all, my favorite thing from this time of the year, THE FOOD!
The traditional foods are super delicious and mostly made out of corn, like corn cakes, cural, pamonha, but there’s also peanuts, specially sweetened peanuts, popcorn, sweet or salted, caramelized apples, quentão, which is a warm spiced drink, that may or may not be alcoholic and is one of my favorite things.
I’ll try to update the thread with some recipes later or maybe just talk more about food, but I can’t promise I actually will.
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in my shit, pass it by (neurotic? Processing)
Kinda wish I didn’t have the whole autism+adhd -> anxiety thing going on. It sucks. Its pride month, so why do I dislike pride? Why do I look at it and feel fear and distrust? Why can’t I let go of all that? I’m hyperaware of peoples perceptions of me, and unable to read people at all. So every little thing that indicates potential social correction is a crisis, and I am never at rest in a group. I’m rarely at rest on my own. I’m tired of performing.
I want to like pride. I want to know that people around me have my back. But all the same I see people and all I can feel is fear. I want to want to go. And a part of me does want to go. Instead I will spend this month avoiding queer people and pride events. I want to feel like I’m one of many, but I also want to be invisible. Dont look at me, but I want to be seen. Its selfcontradictory.
I know I self isolate. I know thats bad. But I can’t bring myself to go out and meet people. I dont know what im more afraid of, people judging me, people being neutral/uncaring, or people being kind. I can’t handle kindness. Someone said they would do something nice for me earlier today and I just couldn’t take it and started silentsobbing. I almost hung up on them. Why does it hurt when people are nice to me? I want to be able to show up, and accept it, and not feel guilty for accepting something nice, not feel afraid of someone doing nice things for me, not feel pain when someone says they care about me…
Thanks for reading if you did, thanks for being a space where I can vent/process.
Maybe it’s because it makes your expectations stronger and makes you feel like a better type of social situation is possible, but you’re missing out?
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I… I dont know. Cause like, when people I’m not close to are kind to me, I discount it, I can push it away. But when someone knows me and cares about me… It just hurts I dont know. It just hurts. Its correlated with me actually feeling cared about.
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I deal with these feelings a lot as well. After spending a long time being starved, being given a single good meal only let’s you know what you’ve been missing out on, and what you might continue missing out on.
That’s how I’ve always thought about it.