How to start the new year? Keep the sea goddess happy.
Every New Year’s Eve, more than two million revelers—twice as many as normally fill Times Square—dress in white and pack Rio de Janeiro’s Copacabana Beach to watch a 15-minute fireworks display.
The one-night hedonistic release is one of the world’s largest New Year’s celebrations, leaving Copacabana’s famous 3.9km stretch of sand littered with rubbish.
But it started as something much more spiritual.
In the 1950s, followers of the Afro-Brazilian religion, Umbanda, were began to gather at Copacabana on New Year’s Eve until make sacrifices to their goddess of the sea, Iemanjá, and ask for good luck in the coming year.
It quickly became one of the most sacred times of the year for followers of a cluster of Afro-Brazilian religions that have their roots in slavery, worship a series of gods And have had to deal with prejudice for a long time in Brazil.
Then, in 1987, a hotel along the Copacabana strip started a fireworks show on December 31. It was a huge hit that started to attract large numbers of people.
“Obviously this was great for the hotel industry and for tourism,” he said Ivanir Dos Santosprofessor of comparative history at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.
A new New Year tradition was born and the revelers adopted some old Umbanda traditions, including throwing flowers into the sea, jumping over seven waves and, above all, wearing white, a symbol of peace in the religion.
But the huge party, Mr. Dos Santos said, “also pushed worshipers off the beach.”
Not quite.
Mr. Dos Santos stood on Copacabana beach, dressed in white, with the chants of Umbanda worshipers behind him. Yet this was December 29, the date on which devotees of Afro-Brazilian religions now descend on Copacabana Beach to make their annual offerings to Iemanjá (pronounced ee-mahn-JA).
In addition to bikini-clad beachgoers and beer and barbecue cheese sellers, hundreds of worshipers tried to make contact with one of their most important gods. Devotees believe that Iemenjá, who is often depicted with flowing hair and a flowing blue-and-white dress, is the queen of the sea and a goddess of motherhood and fertility.
In temperatures above 90 degrees, many gathered under a tent for traditional dances and songs around an altar of small wooden ships, laden with flowers and fruit, that would soon be sent out to sea. Outside, they dug shallow altars in the sand, leaving behind candles, flowers, fruit and spirits.
“This is a tradition that is passed down from generation to generation. From grandmother to mother to son,” said Bruna Ribeiro de Souza, 39, a teacher, sitting in the sand with her mother and her son. They had lit three candles and poured a glass of sparkling wine for Iemenjá. Nearby was their thirty-foot wooden boat, ready for the journey.
Ms Souza’s mother, Marilda, 69, said her own mother took her to Copacabana in the 1950s to make offerings to Iemanjá. It was a way, she said, to reconnect with her family’s African roots.
Afro-Brazilian religions were largely created by slaves and their descendants. From about 1540 to 1850, Brazil imported more slaves than any other country, or nearly half of the estimated 10.7 million slaves brought to the Americas. according to historians.
One of the most popular religions, Candomblé, is a direct extension of the Yoruba beliefs from Africa, which also inspired Santería in Cuba. Rio residents created Umbanda in the 20th century, blending Yoruba worship of various gods with Catholicism and aspects of occultism.
About 2 percent of Brazilians, or more than four million people, identify as followers of Afro-Brazilian religions, according to a 2019 study. (About half identified as Catholic and 31 percent evangelical.) That was up from the 0.3 percent who said they followed the Afro-Brazilian religions in the 2010 Brazilian census, the latest official figures.
The religions have given many black Brazilians a cultural identity and ties to their ancestors. But followers have that too faced persecution. Extremists in the Evangelical Church have called the religions evil, attacked their followers and… their places of worship destroyed.
Still, as the sun set over Copacabana Beach on Friday, groups of beachgoers cheered on worshipers as they marched into the surf with bouquets of white flowers, bottles of sparkling wine and their wooden boats. (Environmental concerns led devotees to abandon Styrofoam boats, and they no longer load things like perfume bottles.)
Alexander Pereira Vitoriano, a cook and Umbanda devotee, carried one of the largest boats and was the first to wade into the waves. When he released the boat, a wave capsized the boat, a sign to the followers that Iemenjá had accepted the sacrifice.
“She comes to take all that is bad to the depths of the sacred sea, all evil, disease, envy,” he said, panting and soaking wet on the shore. “It’s a clean start to the new year.”
Nearby, Amanda Santos poured a bottle of sparkling wine into the waves and cried. “It’s just gratitude,” she said. “Last year I was here and asked for a house, and this year I got my first house.”
After a few minutes, the surf turned into a row of flowers thrown into the sea and then spit out again. As the sky darkened and the crowd brightened, Adriana Carvalho, 53, stood with a white dove in her hands. She had bought the bird the day before to release it as a sacrifice. She asked Iemanjá for peace, health and clear paths for her family.
She released the dove and it fluttered into the air. Then it came down quickly and landed on the back of a woman bent over an altar in the sand. The woman, Sara Henriques, 19, made her first sacrifice.
The dove landed “at the moment we asked for a good 2024, with health, prosperity and peace,” she said. “For me it was confirmation that my wish had come true.”