Posadas, With Random Photos

Happy Christmas Eve! This year, we got to experience a very New Mexican Christmas tradition for the first time. It's called Posadas.

The word "posadas" means something like "journeys." It's a kind of traveling pageant recreating the journey of Mary and Joseph trying to find lodgings in Bethlehem. It's a very old Mexican tradition. It used to be common in every little village in New Mexico, including ours, although it hasn't been done regularly here in about twenty years.

Pause for this Christmas card sent to us from the MiL's sister. Is the sheep knitting her own wool? Is that kind of funny or kind of disturbing?

In the posadas, one little girl is costumed as Mary, one little boy as Joseph. Often they would have an actual donkey or pony for Mary to ride. And then there might be other people dressed as angels or saints, but there was always a crowd that walks with them. These are the pilgrims. This little procession would go to different houses, knock on the door, and sing a song that requests lodging. There would be people in the house that would respond with a song saying nope, be on your way, until the last house, at which they would be invited in.

I guess originally this would happen for the nine nights preceding Christmas, and then on the last night they would be granted entrance to the house. In our village, I'm told the posadas were just for a few nights, but they would visit three houses each night, and at the third house they would be invited inside. Inside the homes, there would be lots of food and drinks and more singing.

Inside our home, I found some more random decorative things in the tree ornament bag, which were duly added to the dried weeds on the big bookcase.

Our priest decided to have a parish Christmas celebration on Sunday that included posadas. Poppy was tapped to be Mary. One of her brothers was Joseph. They got to knock on the doors and lead the procession. In one of the villages of our parish, the church, the rectory, and the parish hall are all clustered together, so we used these as the "houses."

We started at the church. One of the older parishioners who used to lead the posadas in his village led the singing of the pilgrims. Our priest, who has a very nice singing voice and also plays the guitar, led the response singing for the residents of the house. (Which actually just ended up being him and me, because I was holding his lyric sheet for him so he could play the guitar.)

So at each place, Mary and Joseph would knock on the door, the crowd would sing the song requesting entrance, we would respond, and then the crowd would move on to the next "house."

The tree in our real house. I keep the lights on all day, because an unlit Christmas tree just looks sad to me.

At the last stop, which was the parish hall, the response song invited Mary and Joseph and their followers inside. And then we sang some Christmas carols before sitting down to a very New Mexican potluck featuring a lot of very chili-heavy stews that were delicious but WOAH SO SPICY. At least, for me.

It was a lot of fun. As you might imagine, the children were particularly enthused about it. I hope we do it every year, because I think it would get much easier once everyone knows what to expect.

And now I will leave you with a decidedly non-Spanish Christmas song that is still my favorite for Christmas Eve.