Jumping over babies

"Jumpers dressed as the Colacho, a character representing the Devil, bounded over clusters of bemused infants laid out on mattresses. Nobody appeared to get hurt in this year's festive event.

Castrillo, near Burgos, has been holding the event since 1620 to mark the Catholic feast of Corpus Christi. The feast is widely celebrated in Spain, often with processions and mystery plays..."

(Image from Arbroath) [rest in peace, Kevin Norman Gray.  I'm still citing you 6 years later]

Reposted from 2008 to add a better image...

... and a link to a Guardian article about the festival (with lots of good photos).

No one seems to know precisely when the local people began El Colacho, a traditional ceremony that involves not only the aforementioned running and whipping but, most famously, a section in which the “devils” leap over tiny babies laid out on mattresses in the streets. The stone building under the village’s church proudly bears the date 1621, but this was only the year in which Pope Gregory XV gave the controversial ritual his papal blessing; it’s likely the residents had been doing it for some time already. Because of a two-year Covid hiatus, this year’s is the 400th official ceremony...

In truth, the baby-jumping is just one element in a day that has been about so much more – an excuse to bring people from different continents together, to share food and drink, to laugh and to keep alive a link between generations. Believing in the literal truth of the ritual never feels compulsory. The jumping is probably no more dangerous than baptism, and if parents believe that the ceremony has blessed their children, then it has to have been worthwhile.