Tió de Nadal, a “pooping” Christmas log, is an obsession among the kids in Catalunya for a few weeks leading into the holidays. Part of the ancient tradition of burning a Yule log in the hearth at Christmastime, these days it is a short trunk of wood propped up by two front legs, with a smile, pug nose, and floppy red felt Catalan hat called a barretina. Wrapped in a blanket and placed beside the fireplace, it is “fed” clementine and potato peels until the evening of the 23rd or 24th of December.
On that night, the family gathers around and the kids whack it with a heavy stick while chanting at the top of their voices “Ca-ga-ti-ó! Ca-ga-ti-ó!” (“Poop log! Poop log!”) and singing a short song about pooping torró (almond and honey nougat, called turrón in Spanish) and oranges instead of salted herring or charcoal. Then they reach under the blanket and find pieces of torró (and often a small present) that have been “pooped out.”
Around Catalunya, homes resound with chanting verses of the song. (Schools have an enormous Tió that kids bring scraps from home to feed. The offerings look like a rich mound of compost.) My two girls so beat up our Tió (and broke a number of my wooden spoons) in all their practicing over the last years, that we recently bought a new trunk (poor Tió!) at the centuries-old Christmas market in front of the Barcelona Cathedral.
There are many versions of the song, but one standard goes like this, with my (unrhyming) translation of the Catalan original beside it:
| Caga tió, | Poop log, |
| tió de Nadal, | trunk of Christmas, |
| no caguis arengades, | don’t poop herring, |
| que són salades; | which are salty; |
| caga torrons | poop nougat, |
| que són més bons, | which are much tastier, |
| caga taronges | poop oranges |
| que són ben dolces. | that are very sweet. |
My girls know a half-dozen versions of similar songs. After singing one, pounding on Tió, and extracting a present from under the blanket, they go to a back bedroom to “rehearse” the next version while my wife or I secretly tuck another small gift under Tió’s blanket for them to find in the next round.
One popular version that is a favorite of my girls goes like this, with the lyrics more about rhyming than making sense, especially at the end, which turns into almost scat singing of sounds.
Sometimes, for good measure, these lines follow:
