Christmas Traditions
Uploaded by www.gomez-macedonio on Nov 15, 2000
In every culture or tradition we have our different ways to celebrate Christmas. In Latin culture we have our unique way to celebrate the birth of baby Jesus. We of course have religious ceremonies as well as our traditional food, like the famous ponche, posole, and tamales. But we also celebrate as whole family members house. We have music, we dance, and of course we stay up all night. The most important way to celebrate our posadas is to have baby Jesus the house.
The posadas are one of the typical events during a Christmas celebration in Latin America. A posada consist of walking and looking for a place where Virgin Mary and Saint Joseph can spend the night and rest before continuing with their long journey to Bethlehem. Two persons usually represent Saint Joseph and Virgin Mary. In this event, all the people of the community come and participate in this mini-recreation. All the people sing, pray, and even cry when asking for a posada. They use candles and incense to accompany these two Saints. They usually walk all over the neighborhood to find a place. They go from house to house asking for permission to stay and spend the night to rest. Part of a posada is to have people denied the use of their house. So Mary and Joseph continue with their search, until they get to the house that lets them stay. This house is usually decorated with flowers, jade, statue of animals and lights. The people offer food for all the participants and music. Piñatas and contests are also part of a posada. All the children participate in breaking the piñata. The adults stay to pray and celebrate that they found a place for Saint Joseph and Virgin Mary.
The families celebrate Christmas by making tamales, pozole and their favorite traditional beverages such as ponche and champurado. The most popular Christmas treat is tamales. To start making the tamales we use dough of corn. We mix this with water and salt. There are two kinds of tamales; one would be sweet tamale. They make this by using pineapple and sugar. The second one is the chili tamale. This tamale is made with pork or beef and chili. Anther favorite Christmas food is pozole. To make pozole you first boil the meat. When the meat is ready add the hominy. The chili is just to give a good...