Mexican Christmas Customs Nine days of Las Posadas
Tara A. Spears
In Mexico, the holiday season begins with the bang of fireworks in honor of the Virgin on December 16 and picks up momentum with the celebration of Las Posadas beginning that day and continuing until Christmas Eve, for a total of nine days, which some experts say symbolize the nine months of Mary’s pregnancy. The Posada days celebrate the part of the Christmas story where Joseph and Mary looked for a room at an inn but were turned away. These festivities are community based and hold tightly to their religious roots by highlighting the journey of Mary and Joseph before the birth of Jesus. In Jaltemba Bay area, the posadas include fireworks.
Members of the procession are offered refreshments at each house while they sing traditional Christmas songs, but they aren’t invited inside until they reach the last house of the night, where the party continues. The designated house that is the “posada” changes each night. Here are some interesting facts to help you learn more about this notable tradition:
Traditionally, children re-enact the ‘Posada’ procession with the families gathering afterwards for fiestas. For the Posadas, the outside of houses are decorated with seasonal greens and paper lanterns or colored lights. Inside the homes, the usual holiday decoration is the nativity scene, El Nacimiento, although in the last few years decorated pine trees have begun to be added.
The focal point in a Mexican home nativity scene is a stable where clay, wood, straw, or plaster figurines of the Holy Family are sheltered. The scene may be further populated by an angel, Los Reyes Magos (the Magi), the ox and the ass, shepherds and their flocks, and assorted other people and livestock. The figures may be simply positioned in a bed of heno (Spanish moss), or scattered throughout an elaborate landscape.
Many Mexican families take creating the nativity scene very seriously: it may occupy an entire room, often near the front of the house for convenient viewing by neighbors and passer-by. The home nativity arrangement is a source of family pride and religious belief. The creation of the basic landscape begins with papel roca (paper painted in earth tones) draped over tables, taped onto boxes, crushed and shaped to form a multi-leveled, natural looking terrain that frequently includes a series of hills, and all sorts of clever recreation of a natural items such as ponds, cacti, palm trees, and little houses set to form an entire village scene. Colored sawdust and a variety of natural mosses may be spread out as ground cover before the addition of strings of Christmas lights and the assorted human and animal figures. The scene will not be completed until Christmas Eve when the newborn Baby Jesus is finally laid in the manger bed.
Typically the posada party will have a piñata for the children while the adults enjoy other beverages. The traditional Christmas piñata is star shaped, either five or seven points. The five-star piñata that’s filled with candy and goodies represents the star of Bethlehem while the seven star represents the seven deadly sins. The pinata itself symbolizes the temptation of evil, while the act of being blindfolded and hitting it symbolizes overcoming evil with blind faith. The treats released from inside the piñata are the rewards from heaven, which are shared among guests in packages called “aguinaldos.” Often a punch is served to help guests stay warm. Ponche is an aromatic fruit punch that includes piloncillo, water, cinnamon, and fruits such as guavas, tejocotes, and oranges.
Today, a decorated Christmas tree may be incorporated in the Nacimiento or set up elsewhere in the home. As the purchase of a natural pine tree represents a luxury to most Mexican families, the typical arbolito (little tree) is often an artificial one, or more commonly, a bare branch cut from a copal tree or some other type of shrub collected from the countryside. It is traditional to decorate with paper hand-made flowers but with commercialism infiltrating the Mexican culture, store bought ornaments and mini lights are now appearing in homes.
Until very recently, Santa Claus and reindeer did not generally figure in the scheme of Navidad in this predominately tropical country. Although the shopping malls have visits with Santa, a Mexican youngster’s holiday wish list is directed instead to el Niño Dios, the Holy Child.
From the simplest paper decorations to elaborate family keepsakes, the holiday season in Mexico is focused on the spiritual meaning of Christmas and family activities. Get into the Christmas spirit by joining your neighbors caroling or at least watching a parade through the town.
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