Mañanitas

Estas son las mañanitas (These are the "mañanitas")
Que cantaba el Rey David (That were sung by King David)
Hoy por ser tus cumpleaños (Today, since it's your birthday)
Te las contamos a ti. (We will sing them to you.)

Despierta, Maggie, despierta (Wake up, Maggie, wake up)
Mira que ya amenecio (Look the sun's already rising)
Ya los pajarillos cantan (The birds already singing)
La luna ya se metio (The moon has gone.)

Despite what you may (or I may, as well) have learned in your 7th grade Spanish course, Feliz Cumpleaños a Ti sung to the tune of "Happy Birthday" is not Mexico's primary birthday song. Instead, they have the tradition of mañanitas, which is not just the little song above (which actually has several more verses), but also an event. Originally, at dawn on a person's birthday, family and friends would gather outside of their window and wake them up with this song. Afterwards, the guest singers would get invited in for, at the very least, coffee, and usually breakfast (which, ideally, is made by someone else in the household, not the birthday celebrator).

Fortunately, at some point in the past 50 years, with urban migration and less of an agrarian society that wakes up at dawn (I'm guessing), someone realized that waking a person up with the sun with loud, off-key singing and a large group of people mooching their breakfast did not seem like a good birthday present. Now, the mañanitas squad comes around midnight, in the first minutes of a person's birthday. While the second verse of the song no longer makes any sense, at least you don't have to entertain at 5 a.m. - you still are supposed to feed them though, lousy moochers.

Today we are celebrating the birthday of the only, universally beloved person in Mexican history - Benito Juarez! (Tomorrow, just as important - me!)