Navidad

Hello, I am very sorry for how long it has been since my last post. I actually am going to start writing more. It is hard to keep up with the blog. But a good amount has happened since I last wrote.

It was really cool to have Christmas while I was down here. For 9 nights before Christmas Eve, they have a thing called Los Posadas (The Inns). They are parties that people have at different houses in the neighborhood every night to commemorate Joseph and Mary looking for a place to stay. The most of the houses and business in the neighborhood support the Posada by giving fruit, candy and piñatas. We had one at our house. The whole neighborhood goes outside the house of the night while there is a group of people inside the house. They all sing a song playing the role of Mary and Joseph and the people inside sing the role of the innkeeper saying there is no room. Eventually Mary and Joseph convince the people inside to let them in and the Posada begins.

Everything starts out with a Nativity play. The version we had was modern and related to Mexico. There were four modern Mexican characters that started out talking about all the problems of the current times and making jokes about sports and politics. Then they are transported into ancient Israel by an angel to go see Jesus being born. I played the angel haha. I had a priest’s robe on and some costume wings. It was really hard to remember all the lines though because they were in Spanish! The angel has a pretty big role too and like saying all these intense monologues about how Satan needs to be defeated and stuff so I had to have my lines on cards in case I forgot.

After the Nativity play, there is ponche and piñata’s. Ponche is a type of tropical fruit cider and they serve it hot. It is really good! They put in, apples, guayaba, pears, sugar cane, and a bunch of other fruit. Ponche is the traditional Christmas drink but they make it a lot here when it is cold and sometimes there is a little tequila thrown in there. We had about 30 piñatas! The people in my house told me that our Posada is always one of the best because a lot of people want to give stuff to the house that has priests in it haha. So yea we had about 30 piñatas and the whole street in front of our house was full of people for almost 2 hours. It was wild, there were soooo many kids! I didn’t see any major injuries but there were some serious kamikazes that were going on when the piñata was opened.

It was a very interesting experience. I thought it was cool that the whole community gets together and celebrates together even though everyone doesn’t know each other. And it was cool to see how everyone supports the different houses that host the Posadas.

My friend Adam, who studied abroad with me in Oaxaca, was in Mexico City for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. He stayed at Manuel House for the celebration. We went to the albergue for some Christmas Eve festivities and we had our first Mass and dinner of romeritos there, then we came back to the house around 9:30 and napped a little. We had our second Christmas Eve dinner at about 11:30, which consisted of more romeritos, bacalao, turkey, and various side dishes. It was great. Padre Oswaldo had his family there for the night too and we were all up hanging out and throwing back some tequilitos until about 6 am. It was different for me not trying to get to bed early for Santa.

Here they don’t have Santa they have Niño Jesus, and also on January 6th the three kings bring more gifts too! There are Santa Claus pictures in the malls but if you go to the different public areas in the center of the city you will that a more popular option for the kids is a picture with the three kings. It is actually pretty funny, there are three guys dressed like the kings and they are standing in different little huts that are themed in movies like Ice Age and Toy Story. So you can get a picture of your kids with Balthasar, Gaspar, Melchior and Buzz Lightyear haha.

It was a great Christmas, definitely one to remember.