The baby-jumping festival takes place in Sasamón in the Spanish province of Burgos, where it’s been celebrated since the early 1600s. Babies born over the previous twelve months are lain on mattresses in the street, and men dressed as devils and carrying whips and castanets jump over them. According to tradition, the ‘devils’ carry away the babies’ original sin.
While nobody takes the festival very seriously, Pope Benedict XVI instructed Spanish priests to distance themselves from the tradition, citing the Church’s teaching that original sin is cleansed by baptism.
