After a long, slightly rainy tramp into Christiansted at the crack of dawn with the imitable Stanley and the Ten Sleepless Knights, hundreds feasted for free, laughed and joked with friends, and jumped to the music Thursday at the annual Cruzan-Rican Breakfast and Three Kings Day tramp.
"This year the rain blessed us, which is good for the new year," said Luis Alicea, who heads up the committee that organizes the tramp each year. Alicea, a pillar of St. Croix’s long established Puerto Rican community, was dressed in a festive satin suit adorned with the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico flags, and a white hat emblazoned with a coat of arms containing the three Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and both territory’s flags.
Around 7 a.m. the tramp started at Bassin Triangle, flowing through town behind quelbe Christmas carols by Stanley and the band, and arriving at the Christian “Shan” Hendricks Vegetable Market, where a long line of hungry revelers lined up for a massive free breakfast, with johnny cakes, saltfish, stew chicken, baccalaitos, pates of every description, Puerto Rican-style fish soup, ham, kallaloo, salmon balls and more – all donated by volunteers and served for free to all comers.
Leading the tramp were the Three Kings, commemorating the biblical three kings who brought gifts for the baby Jesus as he lay in the manger. The actual day is Jan. 6 – the 12th day after Christmas – but accommodations are made to fit the parade into the busy Christmas Festival agenda.
This year only two bearded kings, played by Luis Cuencas and Sen. Sammuel Sanes, marched down the road. The third turned up missing. "He fell of the fiscal cliff," Cuencas joked – a line that several wags echoed over the next hour, as different people asked where the third king had gone.
"We are here keeping the Three Kings Day tradition, which as you know is a very important Christmas tradition, especially for the Hispanic community," said Sanes, who has played one of the kings for seven years now. The kings will also be marching in the adult parade Saturday, Sanes said.
Helping keep the triumvirate symmetry and pageantry of the parade, Judith Gumbs, well known for selling flowers and trinkets on the Christiansted boardwalk, acted as an informal bandleader and parade queen, dressed colorfully and wearing a New Year’s Eve crown ringed with fuzzy fleece candles.
Many of the cooks and revelers come back again and again, forming their own traditions as the breakfast and tramp grows year by year. 
This was St. Croix resident Gloria Gordon’s fifth breakfast. Gordon likes to celebrate Three Kings Day by crafting and wearing a different festive hat with seasonal and cultural elements.
"This year it celebrates the 60th anniversary of the Crucian Christmas Festival," Gordon said as she prepared to fry up spicy baccalaito (saltfish cakes) for the throngs. "I have Miss St. Croix sitting in the chair on top and pictures of some of the different queens all around, with pretty sequins, like pearls, sapphires and stars, to represent the big anniversary," she said.
The Crucian-Rican Breakfast and Three Kings Day March was started in 2005 by George “Bagoon” O’Reilly, a popular radio host and stalwart supporter of the St. Croix Christmas Festival. O’Reilly spearheaded the tradition for its first three years, along with Lt. Gov. Greg Francis. O’Reilly and Francis, then the St. Croix administrator, decided to start a teetee bread bake-off and hold it on the first Tuesday of the year, which happened to be Three Kings Day in 2005.
Francis continued the tradition after O’Reilly’s passing in 2008.
Three Kings Day is a major part of Christmas celebrations in Puerto Rico. On the night of Jan. 5, the three kings visit children who have conveniently left a box with grass for the magi’s camels under their beds and the kings leave presents in return.
