Thursday Feb 5th – Festival St Agatha – Day 2

On Wednesday they started with a mass at 5:30 AM followed by 24 hours of pulling a large float with a statue of St Agatha on it. The people buy large candles and handed them to the people on the float, who light them. The candles are then discarded. The float was pulled by a very long set of ropes (at least 1 block long). People dress up in white cassocks and black hats to pull the float. It was overwhelming. They visit most of the churches in the city and set off fireworks. In fact they seem to set off fireworks 5-6 times per day and night.  It’s quite a site to see and very difficult to describe. The festival seems half religious and half cultural. It’s also a very commercial event with street vendors everywhere selling balloons, candles, religious ornaments, etc. We can’t seem to figure out why they are doing this for a person who died several centuries ago (251AD).  You can read more about her at this site http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agatha_of_Sicily.