My Own Experience of “Las Posadas”

As a child in a multicultural family, I had the privilege of celebrating the Advent and Christmas seasons in many different ways. I grew up in a family that made room for singing villancicos¹ and making Costa Rican tamales with coffee as well as singing Las Posadas and making Mexican tamales with champurrado.

By the time I was a teenager, Las Posadas was a very well-established tradition in Costa Rica, although we knew that our “Costa Rican Posada” was different from the original Mexican Posadas. Ours was very much organized in church and had a very religious character. Even the priest was present from time to time. It did not happen every day through the nine days before Christmas, but we had at least two or three gatherings to remember the story of Mary and Joseph looking for room in the inn for the birth of the baby Jesus. We would reenact the story. The church choir would lead us in singing villancicos. We would pray for the needs of our community and share tamales and coffee.

When I migrated to the United States in 2005, It was clear that Las Posadas had become one of the most important celebrations for the Hispanic community. As a director of the Spanish-singing choir at St. Paul’s Catholic Center in Bloomington, Indiana, I was part of a group of leaders who organized the members of our small Spanish-speaking ministry. People would volunteer to host Las Posadas in their own homes and offer a traditional meal for the attendees. Although it can get very cold in December in Indiana, we would start by gathering at a specific point in the neighborhood of the host family. Then we would process with the figurines of los peregrinos². Los peregrinos would sit on a portable bed, adorned with poinsettias and tinsel, with four holders—one in each corner—so people could take turns carrying los peregrinos from station to station. The stations were households of families that the host family would have pre-arranged to visit as the procession of people with los peregrinos would go visiting each household.

In each station we would sing a verse or two of the Posada song. When we arrived at each station, the procession would divide in two groups, the innkeepers, which formed a smaller group, and the pilgrims. The pilgrims would knock on the door and sing the verse of the song asking for room in the inn, and the innkeepers would respond from inside the house singing and turning the pilgrims away because, as the song goes, “who knows . . . it could be a stranger trying to rob the house . . . or worse . . . and it is too late anyway to be knocking on people’s doors . . .” After being turned away, the procession would continue. We would sing traditional Christmas songs while walking with candles in our hands until our arrival to the next station.

At the last station, which is usually the home of the host family, we would sing the last two verses, and Mary and Joseph would receive welcome not only into the house, but also into our hearts to live for the rest of the year. Then we would enjoy a fiesta inspired by their welcome that usually included a piñata for the children.

The party and the piñata were of great significance for Las Posadas, as it is also a celebration of the graces of God that we enjoy with the greatest gift of all, Jesus our Savior. The traditional piñata has seven triangles sticking out of a circle. Each of these triangles is a symbol of a deadly sin (in Catholic religion). By hitting the piñata, we are destroying the power of sin, and the candy that falls from the circle in the middle is a symbol of the sweet grace of God that falls indiscriminately over all children of God.

The Threefold Origin of “Las Posadas”

I think Las Posadas has a threefold origin because it is inspired by the story of salvation of the people of God, where God so loved the world that God became incarnate in human form to save the world. Posadas also has a historical origin at the time of colonization, and it has a phenomenological origin because it very quickly evolved as a response of inculturation and popular religiosity in Mexico.

In “Room in the Inn: Ideas for Celebrating Las Posadas,” Hugo Olaiz, Spanish editor for Forward Movement, offers this summary of the tradition:

“In Mexico and some parts of Central America, Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecuador, it is traditional to hold Posadas during the nine days before Christmas, beginning December 16 and ending December 24. Las Posadas are a reenactment of Mary and Joseph’s long, frustrating search for a place where the baby Jesus could be born. The tradition reenacts the story told in Luke 2:1–7 but with a twist: a happy ending with the “innkeeper” welcoming Mary and Joseph into the home. We learn from Las Posadas that by welcoming the poor and the needy, we are welcoming Jesus into our midst (see Matthew 25:40).”³

The Augustinian Friar Diego de Soria is credited with receiving papal approval in 1586 for special Christmas masses called “Misas de Aguinaldo” to be observed throughout Mexico during the nine days previous to Christmas day (see “‘Las Posadas,’ nine days of celebration in Mexico,” The Yucatan Times [Dec. 15, 2016]). However, it is important to recognize that one of the main reasons for the Aztec communities to accept the Roman Catholic celebrations was that they lined up almost perfectly with the celebrations of the Aztec deities. For instance, according to the Aztec calendar, Tonantzin (the mother of the gods), is celebrated on the winter solstice, and the sun god, Hutzilopochtli, was born during the month of December.

Olaiz points out that “as often happens in popular religiosity, the tradition and the song vary from region to region,”⁴ but the ideas of welcoming the baby Jesus, the gifts of grace and salvation, welcoming the stranger, hospitality, and gathering as the family of God are all the same.

A Word about Hispanic Popular Religiosity

While many of the accounts from the time of colonization tell us that the Spanish were able to wipe out and away the Indigenous culture, we now know that it was much more complicated than that. I think that what we learn about traditions like Posadas, the Day of the Dead, or the celebration of our Lady of Guadalupe is that Indigenous culture and celebrations did not disappear but rather took a different form. Moreover, the Spanish religious expressions did not remain the same but were transformed through a process of inculturation: the Indigenous people adapted to Christianity, and orthodox Christianity was also equally shaped by the Indigenous understanding of spirituality.

Every time we celebrate Las Posadas, Día de Muertos, or La Virgen de Guadalupe, we are embracing a Christian belief that has been shaped by the Indigenous understandings of community, the cosmos, and spirituality. In these celebrations, joyful music, native foods, processions, dressing up, and piñatas play a meaningful part in a very much layered religious celebration.

While many of the books on the history of evangelization of Mexico will tell you that the missioners were making advances toward having the Indigenous people accept the Spanish language and Christianity as a new system of belief, anthropologist J. Jorge Klor de Alva describes the accounts from sixteenth-century friars as missioners in what we know today as Mexico in a different and much more credible way. In his essay “Aztec Spirituality and Nahuatized Christianity,” Klor de Alva details the accounts of friars like Bernardino de Sahagún (1499–1590) and Diego Durán (1537–1588), who recorded constant problems with the natives due to “ignorance, indifferences and resistance to the teachings of the church,” suggesting that few, if any, were true (Christian) believers.⁵ Klor de Alva also writes that by the seventeenth century, almost all Mexicans (or natives in Mexico) were pushed to live in rural areas, surrounding haciendas, and other productive units, and in general, the natives were not part of the economic, political, or religious life of the Spanish colony. Klor de Alva points out that by this time, the assumption of the church was that everyone had been baptized and evangelized, and only sporadically, the priests found evidence of “idolatrous activity.”

It seems that through being pushed away from the political centers and a lack of resources, the Indigenous communities took it upon themselves to develop their own Christianity, finding a way for both the Aztec belief system and Christianity to coexist, blend, and balance. A spirituality and a popular religiosity with minimal oversight from the church developed as a consequence of their adaptation and their own understanding of Christianity during the colonial era.⁶ This is significant because it identifies a transformation, an inculturation period, and it names the isolation and marginalization of the native Mexicans as a condition that leads to the development of this religious phenomenon. It is also significant because Hispanic popular religion served to root Christianity in the lives of the new Christians in ways that the official liturgy could not—ways that were led by lay leaders outside of the official temples and basilicas.

In the Episcopal Context

In “Room in the Inn,” Olaiz explains that, in the Episcopal Church, Las Posadas have taken different forms.⁷ Some churches organize an event that takes place in one day, and other congregations do the whole nine days. Some communities gather in neighborhoods, and others do it in church.

Father Anthony Guillén, Canon Missioner for Latino Ministries of the Episcopal Church, also encourages congregations to “experience the incarnational aspect of the Posadas,” as Olaiz notes. Guillén says, “Mary and Joseph are rejected, homeless people. . . . The whole point of the Posadas is to remind us what it is like to experience cold, fatigue, and rejection; so it is crucial for the pilgrims to walk for a long time in the cold.”⁸

A Theology of Hospitality

Las Posadas is about welcoming the stranger, about hospitality, and about building community. Ironically, when I migrated to the United States, many of the households that I visited, for whom I helped organized Las Posadas, were the households of undocumented families who had at some point of their journey to the United States found themselves unhoused. They had been looking for a place where they would be welcomed, where they could see themselves as part of a community, and where they could raise their children. Many of the families had been living in Bloomington, Indiana for many years, and their whole extended families were here, too. These were households where year after year I saw the families grow.

I particularly remember a family from Puebla, Mexico, in which the grandmother was the first one to come. Every year, she would proudly sit next to me and start introducing me to the new grandbabies and great-grandbabies. She had three daughters, and all of them came to celebrate Las Posadas. They all participated in the cooking, and all of them brought their husbands, wives, and children. While they were not a particularly wealthy family, they were proud to offer an impressive display of traditional foods, not only for the members of our Latino ministry, but for anyone who came. Strangers were welcome and became friends, no questions asked. To reject the food would have been a great offense, and since I was in charge of music, to stop singing would have been seen as arrogant on my part.

At a moment in the United States where much of the political rhetoric has criminalized and dehumanized the lives of our immigrant neighbors, the words of scripture resound with renewed urgency: “When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the native-born among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God” (Lev 19:33–34); and “You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt. You shall not abuse any widow or orphan” (Ex 22:21–22). We have learned over and over from the stories of brave biblical immigrant women like Ruth, Hagar, Rebecca, and Mary that the well-being of the people of God is closely linked to the well-being of those who are the least among us.

This year, I invite you to experience Las Posadas in your community. But, instead of putting yourself in the position of the one who extends hospitality or reaches out, allow yourself to experience hospitality from a Latina family. This year, make room in your heart to accept room in the inn, to learn to sing Christmas songs in Spanish, walk side by side with the pilgrims, knock on a stranger’s door, and be welcomed into their home. Try delicious food prepared by a loving immigrant family, bring your children to break a piñata, and celebrate the gifts of God indiscriminately shared in your community.

Notes & Works Cited

1. Villancicos are traditional folk tunes originated in the sixteenth century. In Latin America, the word “villancicos” has evolved to mean specifically Christmas folk tunes. ↩︎
2. Los peregrinos, or the pilgrims, are little statues of Joseph and Mary. Sometimes the donkey is part of it too. ↩︎
3. Hugo Olaiz and Yuri Rodríguez, “Room in the Inn: Ideas for Celebrating Posadas” (Forward Movement, 2015), 1. ↩︎
4. Olaiz and Rodríguez, “Room in the Inn,” 1. ↩︎
5. J. Jorge Klor de Alva, “Aztec Spirituality and Nahuatized Christianity,” in South and Meso-American Native Spirituality: From the Cult of the Feathered Serpent to the Theology of Liberation, eds. Gary H. Gossen and Miguel León-Portilla (New York: Crossroad, 1997), 175. ↩︎
6. Ibid. ↩︎
7. Olaiz and Rodríguez, “Room in the Inn,” 1. ↩︎
8. Quoted in ibid., 2. ↩︎

Featured image of “Piñatas for sale at the Tlalpan Market in Mexico City” (Dec. 16, 2023) is by Paricutina on Wikimedia Commons and published as public domain under Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication