Though the majority of them are crafted in Mexico today, pinatas
(pronounced peen-YAH-tahs) originated in the Far East.
”According to history, it was during Marco Polo`s travels to the Orient that he saw children playing with a pinata. He picked up a pinata and brought it and the craft to Italy,” says Dennis Zamora, curator of the Dallas Independent School Dis-trict`s Cultural Heritage Center.
Zamora says the Spanish copied the Italian ”pignatta”-a game played with a decorated clay pot filled with fruit-and gave it their own name of pinata.
”During the 16th and 17th Centuries, pinatas were enter-tainment for people of social position-royalty and noblemen and noblewomen. They filled the pinatas with jewels from emeralds to sap-phires and rubbies, and then they broke the pot,” Zamora says.
