A 60-year-old madre y abuela officially celebrated having come of age three quinces of milestones later—which her día de su quinceañera and the adult-quinceañera celebration being the bookends to the three quinces. Before anyone makes fun of her, I offer a little cultural context for people whom might not otherwise get it: a quinceañera celebration in traditional Hispanic culture is equivalent to a bar- or bat-mitzvah celebration in traditional Jewish culture. In Aztec culture, it did (and it marked when a girl was considered of marriageable age by the Aztecs). When the Spanish colonized Mexico, quinceañeras quickly blended into the Aztec-Catholic syncretism. Eventually, the celebration of quinceañeras (and quinceañeros) became a pan-Hispanic celebration. By the way, boys subsequently celebrated being quinceañeros in the same way that Judith Eisenstein (née Kaplan) celebrated the first known bat-mitzvah ceremony. (I was actually surprised to find out that celebrations of quinceañeros are actually as ancient of a tradition as celebrations of quinceañeras, as they are not emphasized enough in formal education or other sources re quinceañeras. One source actually talks about 15-year-old Aztec boys being considered quinceañeros and therefore old enough to fight for the Méxica people).
To make fun of a woman for having an adult quinceañera celebration (or as Art Ocasio on Facebook put it, a “four times the fun” quinceañera celebration at 60) is culturally insensitive at best. Besides, in Jewish culture, there’s the equivalent 13 + 70 = 83 for second b’nai-mitzvah celebrations. It usually is done for Holocaust survivors (many of whom are still denied recognition, having been persecuted by the Soviet and Arabized governments instead of the Germans and their accomplices).
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