The holiday season is officially over in Mexico. To me, it felt a lot different than the Holidays in The United States. On a couple of the holidays, I felt a little depressed because I miss the culture and my family in the US but on many of the other holidays, I was so surrounded by love that I didn’t notice that I was missing my family or the other traditions.
The first holiday that is different is Thanksgiving. In Mexico, there is no Thanksgiving. With that being said, the church that I attend has a Thanksgiving celebration because it is a bilingual church and knows that many members come from the US. I was not able to attend because our YAGM group had our Fall retreat on the week of Thanksgiving and we all had dinner together. Thanksgiving was a lot of fun and it was nice to be surrounded my YAGM family for this day, where we could all speak English.
We do not have posadas in the United States. They were a lot of fun; I have now been to three of them. Usually there are tomales (a dough filled with either chicken or mole wrapped in a corn dough) and ponche (a hot fruit drink). But before we eat, we usually have one group go outside the house and one stay inside and we sing this song:
It is based on when Mary and Joseph went to Bethlehem to find a place to give birth to Jesus while hiding from Herod.
Christmas eve is a bigger day than it is in the United States. On Christmas Eve, we have our Christmas Eve service like normal, but after the service ends the partying begins. I enjoyed this service because of the Christmas music. It was nice to hear after feeling like I missed out on enjoying the music and weather of the Christmas season. I felt much more alive after the service. We started with eating a big dinner, and it is expected to gorge yourself (kind of like Thanksgiving). We also do some serious drinking as a family and stay up until about four or five in the morning.
Christmas day was not as important. On Christmas, everyone sleeps in because of the partying from the night before and we just sat around and watched TV. This Christmas was on a Sunday so we got up for church in the morning. I did well not to fall asleep in the service after four hours of sleep.
Día de Los Reyes, was the day of the gift exchange in Mexico. This holiday is on the 6th of January. The kids write a letter to the three kings (that came to visit Jesus at his birth). This letter is a request for gifts. The three kings bring three gifts for the kids, just like the wise men brought Jesus his gifts. I had to work on this day but everyone was still very excited for this day, my brothers were awake and ready to open presents at 6:30 in the morning so we were able to enjoy the present opening together before I went to work. On this day, we eat a bread called Rosca. The bread has little babies stuffed in it that is supposed to represent baby Jesus. No one wants to find the baby Jesus. At work, if you find one, you have to bring tomales or ponche on February 2nd. We also ate rosca at home and at church and I took a baby at home so now I need to do the dishes for a month. The story behind baby Jesus in the bread is that Jesus is hiding, and after you find him you need to keep him safe (from King Herod) until Candlemas (second of Feburary, when Jesus was presented at the Jewish temple.). This ties in with the Día de los Reyes because the three wise men were supposed to report to Herod about Jesus. When they did not report to him, Herod killed all the babies under two years old.
