Las Posadas (“The Inns”), a nine-day (novena) celebration with origins stretching back to Spanish colonial times, begins December 16 and ends December 24.
An annual tradition for many Mexican Catholic and other Latino communities — in El Norte notably New Mexico and California — the musical drama enacts the rejection Mary and Joseph endure trying to find a place where they can stay and the Child can be born. Each evening a procession is led by children portraying Mary and Joseph. Even a burro can have a role, as at left, in bearing the Virgin Mary, when the procession arrives before different houses in the neighborhood. The couple pleads in song to be allowed in but are refused. For eight successive nights, they are turned away (the Devil often playing his part), until finally on Christmas Eve the doors are thrown open. The festivities move inside to the joyful smashing of the pinata, the singing of Christmas carols and feasting on seasonal delicacies.
Of course, we imagined such a celebration would generate the easy path to “untold Internet riches.” Not so, as we discover, surprisingly, and confirm in this article’s very first sentence (below), published in 1980, but, still, matters have only modestly improved in our digital realm.
Villarreal, Mary MacGregor. “Celebrating Las Posadas in Los Angeles.” Western Folklore, 39.2 (April, 1980): 71-105.
UST affiliates see: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1500067
As with almost any conceivable topic, we come across numerous ‘hits’ here and there, but little to make much of. Even the Wikipedia article gets tagged as in dire need of expert revision. On the other hand, the persistent searcher does find a link to a new master’s thesis.
Patrick Cox. “Ecclesiology of Las Posadas.” [Master’s thesis]. St. Norbert College (De Pere, WI), 2007.
http://www.eifm.info/ThesisPapers/CoxPatrick/CoxPatrickThesis.doc
Finally, for the curious, here is a link to words and music. As expected in folk performance, there are many variations in traditional Las Posadas. Below is an image of one written down version.
http://www.hospitalidadnc.org/pdf/posadas.pdf.