What Is Three Kings Day and will this Rosca de Reyes bread break a Tri-Cities record?
Hello Habanero and dozens of Tri-Cities business will celebrate the Epiphany on Jan. 6 with an event they hope will become a local tradition.
The Kennewick marketing agency will present the largest Rosca De Reyes or Kings Bread ever made in the Tri-Cities during Royal Rosca, a food and culture centered celebration from 1-4 p.m. Jan. 6 at the Pasco Red Lion.
Admission is free. Attendees are invited to donate what they can.
All proceeds will benefit Grace Kitchen, a nonprofit that provides life skills training and employment to impoverished women in east Pasco.
Edward Lee and Juan Guzman, co-founders of Hello Habanero, struck on the idea of building a festival around the Kings Bread tradition when they were working with Rollin, a local business that wanted to organize a hot chocolate give away.
They considered building a holiday event around it but the December calendar was already full.
That’s when Lee had, well, an epiphany: Build an event around the 12th day of Christmas, widely celebrated in Hispanic and other cultures as the day the three wise men arrived in Bethlehem to meet the baby Jesus.
Family tradition
His family has a long history of celebrating the Epiphany with Rosca De Reyes or Kings Bread. It was important to his late grandmother, Lee said.
Rosca de Reyes is a sweet bread festooned with fruit and icing and embedded with one or more small figurine of a baby symbolizing the newborn messiah.
It is a meaningful tradition to Guzman as well.
Kings Bread, sometimes Three Kings Bread or Kings Cake, is prepared for everyone, rich or poor, the men agreed.
Organizing a community festival at the Epiphany made logistical sense and business sense too.
Hello Habanero is a young firm that specializes in developing marketing strategies that reach across different cultures.
Putting Rosca de Reyes and Mexican hot chocolate at the heart of an event promises to be a family-friendly gathering with appeal to Latino and other cultures.
Sponsors warmed to the idea, underwriting the roughly $3,500 it will cost for the event.
In addition to the rosca, there will be booths, entertainment and lots of food.
“It’s not called a fiesta without food,” Lee said.
Eli’s Bakery on board
Eli’s Bakery, a Mexican bakery on Court Street in Pasco, will prepare the 20-foot (or larger) bread in sections.
In family celebrations, the person who gets the “baby” baked into the bread is charged with preparing the next year’s bread.
The Pasco event is leaning into that spirit. The person who finds the baby in January will help choose the nonprofit to benefit from proceeds from the 2025 event.
At 20 feet, the Rosca de Reyes will be the largest ever presented in the Tri-Cities, though far from record-breaking. That honor rests with a university in Mexico that reportedly created one that was 2.8 miles long.
Lee and Guzman don’t expect to set any world’s records, but they do hope their event will be a happy occasion for local families to celebrate the Epiphany, Three Kings Day and the New Year.
And they hope it will make a big impact on Grace Kitchen.
Lifting up women
They chose to make Grace Kitchen the inaugural beneficiary after being introduced by the Three Rivers Community Foundation.
Lee particularly was impressed by its mission to lift the most marginalized women in the community out of poverty.
His own grandmother would have benefited from Grace Kitchen had it existed in her lifetime. The nonprofit offers education, training and a paycheck.
They hope to raise $5,000 to $10,000 to support its mission.
Amanda Lorraine and her husband, Devin, opened grace Kitchen at the former Union Gospel Mission mens’ shelter in east Pasco in early 2020.
With help from an army of supporters, including staffers from the Lodge at Columbia Point, they converted the tired building into clean, safe place for women escaping from addiction, sex trafficking and homelessness.
Grace Kitchen operates a pasta business and offers classes, as well as paid work for dozens of women.
Amanda Lorraine said the pasta business supports about 25% of its budget. The nonprofit has an ongoing need for support to pay wages to the women in its programs, she said.
Follow the Royal Rosca event on Facebook at bit.ly/RoscaBread or sign up to be a sponsor or have a booth at bit.ly/RoscaSponsor.
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