Lottery Prayers
The lottery chant has just begun at a little past nine o'clock. A few minutes into it, hopes began to be dashed as the second prize, with a million and a half euros, came out. Every year there is the same illusion, and every year it gets dashed. Some years a little of it remains with the small prizes.
It's not a rich lottery. Most people buy a tenth of an entire ticket worth twenty euros. The first prize is 400,000 euros to the tenth, or décimo. That is not enough to retire upon and buy a house in the Caribbean. But to those who are unemployed or who have a slave-wage job it is a life buoy that will help lift them out of debt. And to those who have a boss they wish they could throw a jackhammer at, it lets them do so and gain time to find a nicer boss. It's not easy to win the first prize. There are 99,999 numbers. The chances of winning the top prize has been compared to a drop in five liters of water. Still, it is Christmas, the time of year when illusion runs riot and the hope of someday winning never quite goes away. After all, good things are supposed to happen at Christmas. Or so we like to think.
One year it fell here. We didn't have the winning number because my husband decided against buying it, thinking it was too neat a number. One of my brother-in-laws didn't think so. He was generous with his parents and siblings. But, oh, the excitement of being in town and hear someone yelling, "The first prize fell here!" O gordo, the fat one. Carlos III introduced the first lottery in Spain in 1763. He based the lottery on a lotto-type lottery that existed in Italy at that time. In 1812 was when the lotería moderna, the modern lottery was established, forerunner to today's national lottery. As a gimmick to get people to buy lottery, though, at the end of the eighteenth century a personage was created and called El Fanático por la Lotería o el Enano Afortunado. It was a caricature of the wooden balls used to pick the numbers and prizes made up to look like a man. It was first nicknamed El Enano, the Dwarf, but later referred to as El Gordo, the Fat One. And so the first prize became known, for its quantity and the cartoon, which also happened to be the first publicity for the lottery in Spain.
And so the morning is whiling away, with most people who are at home listening to the radio or television, waiting for one of the numbers they played to be announced. Or going out this afternoon to get the complete list to see if their numbers were at least awarded a hundred euros. Everyone is waiting for their Christmas present. And to break out the champagne.
It's not a rich lottery. Most people buy a tenth of an entire ticket worth twenty euros. The first prize is 400,000 euros to the tenth, or décimo. That is not enough to retire upon and buy a house in the Caribbean. But to those who are unemployed or who have a slave-wage job it is a life buoy that will help lift them out of debt. And to those who have a boss they wish they could throw a jackhammer at, it lets them do so and gain time to find a nicer boss. It's not easy to win the first prize. There are 99,999 numbers. The chances of winning the top prize has been compared to a drop in five liters of water. Still, it is Christmas, the time of year when illusion runs riot and the hope of someday winning never quite goes away. After all, good things are supposed to happen at Christmas. Or so we like to think.
One year it fell here. We didn't have the winning number because my husband decided against buying it, thinking it was too neat a number. One of my brother-in-laws didn't think so. He was generous with his parents and siblings. But, oh, the excitement of being in town and hear someone yelling, "The first prize fell here!" O gordo, the fat one. Carlos III introduced the first lottery in Spain in 1763. He based the lottery on a lotto-type lottery that existed in Italy at that time. In 1812 was when the lotería moderna, the modern lottery was established, forerunner to today's national lottery. As a gimmick to get people to buy lottery, though, at the end of the eighteenth century a personage was created and called El Fanático por la Lotería o el Enano Afortunado. It was a caricature of the wooden balls used to pick the numbers and prizes made up to look like a man. It was first nicknamed El Enano, the Dwarf, but later referred to as El Gordo, the Fat One. And so the first prize became known, for its quantity and the cartoon, which also happened to be the first publicity for the lottery in Spain.And so the morning is whiling away, with most people who are at home listening to the radio or television, waiting for one of the numbers they played to be announced. Or going out this afternoon to get the complete list to see if their numbers were at least awarded a hundred euros. Everyone is waiting for their Christmas present. And to break out the champagne.
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