Las Posadas: Advent #14

This is my last Advent newsletter. Today, I’ve focused on some personal memories of my childhood Christmasses in Mexico and have included links to great writing. Thank you so much for the lovely messages and encouragement. Feliz Navidad!

We are heading home to Saltillo via the Colombia Bridge border crossing to the West of Nuevo Laredo. The Mexico 57 toll highway between Saltillo and the border is now four-lane. Still, back in the seventies, it was not, although it has always been clotted with lorries and tankers, mopeds and Beetles weaving crazily in and out, the smell of exhaust fumes and hot cement pouring in through the open windows. It is madness. I adore it. In the opposite direction, traffic slows and carelessly braids together as the border approaches, cars and vehicles stuffed with humans and their detritus, packing and unpacking bags for inspection, fishing in glove compartments for documents, reaching over seats to smack tired and scrappy children. “Sit still and behave! Or the guards will take you away!”

We had driven to the USA to buy Christmas gifts before our swift detour to visit places known only to us locals, turning off the highway into the mountains proper, towards ravines and deep pools gouged by waterfalls. The water is the same colour as our VW. My father makes an illegal U-turn on the highway on the way back. The police arrive and demand a cash bribe in an exquisitely mannered way. Most drivers choose to pay up. “What would happen if we don’t pay, Dad?” “They’d shoot out our tires and leave us here.” The police siphon off a gallon or two of gasoline. It’s likely they have not been paid but are still expected to buy gas. Polite, friendly, one of them strokes my hair: “Usted tiene una familia encantadora, senor”. You have a lovely family, sir. Gracias. We’d be anxious if our father looked anxious. He is used to it—when in Rome and all that.

Back home for Las Posadas and its commemoration of the long journey undertaken by Joseph and Mary and their search for lodging in Bethlehem. (The tradition was brought to Mexico from Spain by Catholic Missionaries in the 1500s.) Night after night, the procession calls at every home along the route. My school has its nativity, and I am the Angel Gabriel wearing a dress of heavy cream satin despite the incongruousness of a blonde in a story emanating from a Middle Eastern land. ‘Entren, Santos Peregrinos, reciban este rincón, que aunque es pobre la morada, os la doy de corazón.’

There’s the happiness of families, strolling at night through the streets, eating their honey and lime paletas in the Plaza, the men smoking stubby cigarillos, the women delving into straw bags, retrieving hankies to wipe sticky baby faces and fingers. The church bells announce the lateness of the hour. The adults drink Ponche Navideño with rum; ours without.

The ubiquitous piñatas: the Nochebuena star and, on Christmas Day, a Daisy Duck, a white reindeer. Two men stand on opposing flat roofs holding each end of the rope, the piñata dangling limply, awaiting the mayhem. Children are blindfolded, take the crepe paper-decorated stick in turn and swipe purposefully at the piñata as it jerks and sways, the men making it more or less easy according to our age.

‘Dale, dale, dale , no pierdas el tino

porque si lo pierdes, pierdes el camino.

Ya le diste una, ya le diste dos, ya le diste tres, ¡y tu tiempo se acabo!’

The piñata is in tatters. Paper streamers whirl and float down with each ‘thwack’ followed by a sharp crack as the stick meets the clay pot filled with sweets buried deep in its centre. We scrap and scream as the candies shower down. Candies are stuffed into pockets, into mouths, our cheeks are bulging. The blindfold is supposed to symbolize faith, and the stick used to hit the piñata is supposed to represent virtue: we forget that last bit as we fight.

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Lesley Tellez: How to make ponche.

A Piñata in a Pine Tree: A Latino Twelve Days of Christmas by Pat Mora

Snake Poems: An Aztec Invocation by Francisco X. Alarcón

Saveur: When Pepe Comes Home For Christmas.

Readopting the Tamalada in Folklife.

Meet Angelina Muñiz Huberman, a Mexican writer whose novels explore Sephardic history and crypto-Judaism: via the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

“Parents don’t want to break them,” he says. “My clients still go buy an inexpensive piñata and fill that with candy to break. Mine becomes a showpiece.” Alfonso Hernandez makes custom piñatas in his Dallas garage. Via Texas Monthly.