Albuquerque at Sunset Of Piñon, Red Chile Ristras, Farolitos and…Home
Christmas in New Mexico
Christmas in New Mexico
Christmas in New Mexico begins earlier than is usual in most other American locales, on December 16th, with Las Posadas (LAS poh-SAH-dahs, Spanish for "the inns"). It’s a nine-day children’s festival that ends on Christmas Eve. For centuries, Las Posadas has been an honored part of the Christmas tradition. In it, families, churches, communities and, in Santa Fe's case, the Palace of the Governors, re-enact the search by Mary and Joseph to find lodgings prior to the birth of Jesus. A typical Las Posadas celebration stretches out over nine nights, from Dec. 16th to the 24th—with different families hosting a small party for the children and others in their homes.
The tradition of Las Posadas dates back to the 16th century and St. Ignatius Loyola, who used an Aztec festival to teach about the birth of Christ, turning their nine-day celebration of the birth of the Aztec Sun God into a Christian celebration. What started as a novena, or nine days of prayer, eventually moved from the church to the community, to be celebrated in people's homes.
Typically, each family in a village or a neighborhood will schedule a night for the Posada to be held at their home. Every home has a nativity scene and the hosts of the Posada act as the innkeeper. The neighborhood children and adults are the pilgrims (peregrinos), who have to request lodging by going house-to-house singing a traditional song about the pilgrims. All the pilgrims carry small lit candles, or farolitos, in their hands. Two children portray Joseph and Mary. In many cases, Mary rides a small donkey (or burro) and Joseph leads it. Attendants such as angels and shepherds are acquired along the way, and walk along behind Mary and Joseph. The head of the procession will have a candle inside a paper lampshade. At each house, the resident responds by refusing lodging (also in song), until the weary travelers reach the designated site for the party, where Mary and Joseph are finally recognized and allowed to enter. At the end of the long journey, there will be Christmas carols (villancicos), and children will break open piñatas by striking these colorful papier-mâché objects with bats while blindfolded to break them open and obtain the candy hidden inside. Afterward comes the holiday feasting.
The tradition of Las Posadas dates back to the 16th century and St. Ignatius Loyola, who used an Aztec festival to teach about the birth of Christ, turning their nine-day celebration of the birth of the Aztec Sun God into a Christian celebration. What started as a novena, or nine days of prayer, eventually moved from the church to the community, to be celebrated in people's homes.
Typically, each family in a village or a neighborhood will schedule a night for the Posada to be held at their home. Every home has a nativity scene and the hosts of the Posada act as the innkeeper. The neighborhood children and adults are the pilgrims (peregrinos), who have to request lodging by going house-to-house singing a traditional song about the pilgrims. All the pilgrims carry small lit candles, or farolitos, in their hands. Two children portray Joseph and Mary. In many cases, Mary rides a small donkey (or burro) and Joseph leads it. Attendants such as angels and shepherds are acquired along the way, and walk along behind Mary and Joseph. The head of the procession will have a candle inside a paper lampshade. At each house, the resident responds by refusing lodging (also in song), until the weary travelers reach the designated site for the party, where Mary and Joseph are finally recognized and allowed to enter. At the end of the long journey, there will be Christmas carols (villancicos), and children will break open piñatas by striking these colorful papier-mâché objects with bats while blindfolded to break them open and obtain the candy hidden inside. Afterward comes the holiday feasting.
The Las Posadas procession from St. Francis de Assisi Cathedral 
In northern New Mexico, farolitos (or little lanterns) help to light the way for Las Posadas and, on Christmas Eve, they will line the walkways and rooftops of homes and businesses in the millions, creating a candlelit wonderland, to light the way of Santo Niño to the church on the plaza. People in Albuquerque call the paper bag lanterns, luminarias, but natives from Santa Fe and the villages of Northern New Mexico insist the correct term is farolitos. Historically, a true luminaria is one of a series of small bonfires lining the roads.
On Christmas Eve, as darkness fell at my home in Albuquerque, the luminarias were set alight to burn all night long. My father built a massive adobe fireplace, centered against the longest wall in the family room. A popping, flickering piñon fire cast its warm fragrant scent into the air. The blue spruce Christmas tree, my dad cut in the high country of northern New Mexico was decorated with black or brown-centered ojos de dios—the eyes of God—to watch over our home and family. Small kachinas, made from bits of felt and stuffed with cotton, hung from the trees as did the odds and ends made by my brothers and me over the years, in school, Cub Scouts and Girl Scouts. Mother also decorated the tree with iced sugar cookies, tied up in cellophane with colorful ribbon, and candy canes. It was an eclectic sort of tree, a tree celebrating children, but it was…beautiful...magical. Later on, after all of us were grown, mother decorated native plants to use as their Christmas tree. An artist, each tree Mother decorated was original, unique and remembered now only in pictures by a grateful daughter who treasured them and the memories she helped create.
On Christmas Eve, as darkness fell at my home in Albuquerque, the luminarias were set alight to burn all night long. My father built a massive adobe fireplace, centered against the longest wall in the family room. A popping, flickering piñon fire cast its warm fragrant scent into the air. The blue spruce Christmas tree, my dad cut in the high country of northern New Mexico was decorated with black or brown-centered ojos de dios—the eyes of God—to watch over our home and family. Small kachinas, made from bits of felt and stuffed with cotton, hung from the trees as did the odds and ends made by my brothers and me over the years, in school, Cub Scouts and Girl Scouts. Mother also decorated the tree with iced sugar cookies, tied up in cellophane with colorful ribbon, and candy canes. It was an eclectic sort of tree, a tree celebrating children, but it was…beautiful...magical. Later on, after all of us were grown, mother decorated native plants to use as their Christmas tree. An artist, each tree Mother decorated was original, unique and remembered now only in pictures by a grateful daughter who treasured them and the memories she helped create.
Tumbleweed...in case you wondered. My dad usually supplied the Christmas trees for our classrooms but, when I was in fifth grade, we made something quite different. We put white powdered tempera paint into big brown paper sacks along with wet tumbleweeds. We shook them gently, a hard task for a fifth-grader! Tumbleweeds abound on the high desert, so we never had far to look for another if the last one we’d just made had shaken a little too hard inside the paper sack. Once removed from the sack and dried, we hung small red glass balls on them, stacked them in roughly the shape of a Christmas tree. We suspended some of our white-painted tumbleweeds from the classroom ceiling. They might look tacky to adult eyes and might have been a terrible fire hazard. But to a fifth grade child eager to see what came on Christmas Day, they were way cool.
Christmas Eve was never complete without dinner at La Placita, a Mexican restaurant on the Plaza. In the lobby, the blue spruce Christmas tree, flocked white to resemble it as it was before it was cut out of snowy woods, was decorated with little white lights to resemble starry New Mexico nights and hung with red chiles tied to the trees with green ribbon. In the dining room, a cottonwood tree grew right through the roof. Hostesses supplied us with baskets piled high with fresh, hot, puffy sopapillas and jugs of honey. You eat them by biting off a corner, filling it with honey that drips down your chin and onto your fingers as you eat it. They also took away a little of the sting from the fiery hot red chile salsa that the fresh hot blue and yellow corn tortilla chips had been dipped in. (In New Mexico, if you’re asked red or green, they’re referring to the chile—and they don’t mean con carne!) Soon the table was laden with posole for good luck, tamales, enchiladas made with fresh hot tortillas, Mexican rice and frijoles refritos…yum, yum!
I’ll be home for Christmas, Mom, if only in my dreams…
I’ll be home for Christmas, Mom, if only in my dreams…