Mexico is one of my favorite places in the world and Christmas is my favorite season of the year.
As a result I have become fascinated with Mexican Christmas traditions.
I must confess that I have never spent Christmas Eve or Christmas Day in Mexico, however I have visited Mexico in December, January and February and have experienced some of the Christmas (Navidad in Spanish) traditions that Mexicans enjoy over this time period.
For Mexicans the Christmas season begins like other parts of North America, with a commercial blitz well before December as stores display decorations, seasonal food and drink and toys for children.
Many houses are decorated with Christmas lights, tinsel and poinsettias.
Beginning December 16 and culminating on December 24 the Mexican Christmas season is celebrated in earnest in the form of posadas.
The posadas are nightly rituals played out over nine evenings when groups, often children, wander the streets carrying lit candles as they follow a replica of Mary and Joseph.
The group proceeds from door to door, on a pre-arranged route of homes.
They sing traditional songs asking for entry into the posada (inn), imitating the journey of Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem.
At the first few homes they are met with rejection until finally they are recognized and permitted to enter at the final house.
Upon entering, a party follows, often with a piñata.
The piñata is a paper mache figure that is suspended in the air by a rope.
One by one a lineup of children are then blindfolded and given the chance to swing at the piñata with a long pole.
When the piñata finally breaks, candies and coins spill onto the ground for the children to collect.
Also prior to Christmas Eve, local churches and schools in Mexico will feature pastorelas, Christmas plays that include traditional characters such as Mary and Joseph, shepherds and wise men.
These performances most often depict the battle between good and evil in the form of winged angels dressed in white and devils in bright red costumes with horns and tails.
In addition to hanging up Christmas decorations borrowed from other regions of North America such as Santa Claus, reindeer and snowflakes, many Mexicans adorn their homes with elaborate manger scenes (called nacimientos) featuring Mary and Joseph, the wise men, shepherds, angels and a host of animals including the usual donkeys, camels and sheep but at times adopting such exotic species as lions, tigers and elephants.
The crib or cuna is left empty until Christmas Eve when a figure of the baby Jesus is placed in it.
Some of these nacimientos that I have seen can occupy an entire room of a home or the whole front patio.
While Christmas Eve with its midnight mass, followed by a family dinner into the early morning hours, provides a climax to Mexico's Christmas season, it is by all means not the end.
Still to come is the Three Kings Day or Día de los Reyes Magos on January 6.
This holiday is celebrated in a similar way to Christmas Eve in other countries when, instead of hanging up stockings and leaving milk and cookies for the overnight arrival of Santa Claus, Mexican children routinely leave out shoes for the wise men to fill and provide food and drink for them as well as hay for their camels.
In the morning the children awaken to a host of toys, supposedly delivered by the wise men, Gaspar, Melchior and Balthasar.
In reality they were bought by their parents at stores and special, open air toy markets set up throughout the country to accommodate the buying frenzy.
At department stores and other public locations children can visit costumed wise men to make their wishes known in advance, similar to children in other countries who do the same with Santa Claus.
Also on the Three Kings Day, families and business associates throughout Mexico participate in the sharing of a special oval or round-shaped cake, meant to look like the crown of one of the kings, known as the rosca de reyes.
I have seen these cakes mass produced and stacked high in cardboard packaging in supermarkets, and people standing at bus stops and boarding buses and taxis with these packages on the eve of the Three Kings Day.
On the day itself, people sit around the table and each person must cut out a piece of the cake for themselves.
This is done at home, in the workplace or sometimes at both.
One rosca celebration that I participated in at a Mexican workplace also included a drawing of numbered slips of paper from a hat to raffle away a small gift to the person whose number coincided with the same number drawn later.
The cakes or roscas, which are eaten while drinking hot chocolate, are doughy and are covered with sticky dried fruit in colors of red, green and yellow.
Hidden inside are small plastic figures known as monos, representative of the baby Jesus.
Whoever encounters one of these figures in their piece must provide a meal of tamales and a hot corn drink called atole to the rest of the family members or co-workers who are present.
This obligation is fulfilled four weeks later on Candlemass or Día de laCandelaria which falls on February 2.
Coincidentally, many people take down the nacimiento on this day as a final event of the Mexican Christmas season.
While I prefer the Christmas traditions of my own youth that included going to bed on Christmas Eve with the anticipation of Christmas morning gift-opening and a sumptuous dinner in the afternoon on December 25, I certainly enjoy and appreciate the extended Christmas season that Mexico's Christmas traditions provide.
As a result I have become fascinated with Mexican Christmas traditions.
I must confess that I have never spent Christmas Eve or Christmas Day in Mexico, however I have visited Mexico in December, January and February and have experienced some of the Christmas (Navidad in Spanish) traditions that Mexicans enjoy over this time period.
For Mexicans the Christmas season begins like other parts of North America, with a commercial blitz well before December as stores display decorations, seasonal food and drink and toys for children.
Many houses are decorated with Christmas lights, tinsel and poinsettias.
Beginning December 16 and culminating on December 24 the Mexican Christmas season is celebrated in earnest in the form of posadas.
The posadas are nightly rituals played out over nine evenings when groups, often children, wander the streets carrying lit candles as they follow a replica of Mary and Joseph.
The group proceeds from door to door, on a pre-arranged route of homes.
They sing traditional songs asking for entry into the posada (inn), imitating the journey of Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem.
At the first few homes they are met with rejection until finally they are recognized and permitted to enter at the final house.
Upon entering, a party follows, often with a piñata.
The piñata is a paper mache figure that is suspended in the air by a rope.
One by one a lineup of children are then blindfolded and given the chance to swing at the piñata with a long pole.
When the piñata finally breaks, candies and coins spill onto the ground for the children to collect.
Also prior to Christmas Eve, local churches and schools in Mexico will feature pastorelas, Christmas plays that include traditional characters such as Mary and Joseph, shepherds and wise men.
These performances most often depict the battle between good and evil in the form of winged angels dressed in white and devils in bright red costumes with horns and tails.
In addition to hanging up Christmas decorations borrowed from other regions of North America such as Santa Claus, reindeer and snowflakes, many Mexicans adorn their homes with elaborate manger scenes (called nacimientos) featuring Mary and Joseph, the wise men, shepherds, angels and a host of animals including the usual donkeys, camels and sheep but at times adopting such exotic species as lions, tigers and elephants.
The crib or cuna is left empty until Christmas Eve when a figure of the baby Jesus is placed in it.
Some of these nacimientos that I have seen can occupy an entire room of a home or the whole front patio.
While Christmas Eve with its midnight mass, followed by a family dinner into the early morning hours, provides a climax to Mexico's Christmas season, it is by all means not the end.
Still to come is the Three Kings Day or Día de los Reyes Magos on January 6.
This holiday is celebrated in a similar way to Christmas Eve in other countries when, instead of hanging up stockings and leaving milk and cookies for the overnight arrival of Santa Claus, Mexican children routinely leave out shoes for the wise men to fill and provide food and drink for them as well as hay for their camels.
In the morning the children awaken to a host of toys, supposedly delivered by the wise men, Gaspar, Melchior and Balthasar.
In reality they were bought by their parents at stores and special, open air toy markets set up throughout the country to accommodate the buying frenzy.
At department stores and other public locations children can visit costumed wise men to make their wishes known in advance, similar to children in other countries who do the same with Santa Claus.
Also on the Three Kings Day, families and business associates throughout Mexico participate in the sharing of a special oval or round-shaped cake, meant to look like the crown of one of the kings, known as the rosca de reyes.
I have seen these cakes mass produced and stacked high in cardboard packaging in supermarkets, and people standing at bus stops and boarding buses and taxis with these packages on the eve of the Three Kings Day.
On the day itself, people sit around the table and each person must cut out a piece of the cake for themselves.
This is done at home, in the workplace or sometimes at both.
One rosca celebration that I participated in at a Mexican workplace also included a drawing of numbered slips of paper from a hat to raffle away a small gift to the person whose number coincided with the same number drawn later.
The cakes or roscas, which are eaten while drinking hot chocolate, are doughy and are covered with sticky dried fruit in colors of red, green and yellow.
Hidden inside are small plastic figures known as monos, representative of the baby Jesus.
Whoever encounters one of these figures in their piece must provide a meal of tamales and a hot corn drink called atole to the rest of the family members or co-workers who are present.
This obligation is fulfilled four weeks later on Candlemass or Día de laCandelaria which falls on February 2.
Coincidentally, many people take down the nacimiento on this day as a final event of the Mexican Christmas season.
While I prefer the Christmas traditions of my own youth that included going to bed on Christmas Eve with the anticipation of Christmas morning gift-opening and a sumptuous dinner in the afternoon on December 25, I certainly enjoy and appreciate the extended Christmas season that Mexico's Christmas traditions provide.
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