Posada Time

For weeks Indians had been filling the markets of Mexico City with Christmas goods. Over the mountains from Toluca and Puebla they had come dogtrotting, their backs piled high with big clay pots (pinatas), their burros laden with little clay figurines of Joseph, Mary, the Christ Child, shepherds, lambs and the Three Kings.

This week, alongside tenement doors and the imposing iron-grill porticoes of mansions, the little figurines glinted in the light of the December moon. For the humble poor as well as the rich, it was Posada time, the season of Mexico's traditional pre-Christmas parties, when visitors go from house to house bearing lighted candles and singing the traditional words that ask shelter for the holy figures. The hosts sing an answer, saying, like the innkeeper of ancient Judea, that all the beds are taken. The ritual over, everyone troops inside for food & drink.

Palo & Pinata. This week, as always, the highlight of each posada (literally, an inn) was the breaking of the pinata, a big clay pot. The pinata, filled with presents and decorated with gay streamers, was hung from the ceiling. One by one guests were blindfolded, spun around, and allowed to crack at the pinata with a palo (stick). Usually they missed. Then the smallest child was allowed to split it open, whereupon everyone dived for the shower of candies, fruits and toys.

Occasionally, drink got the best of the funmakers, and a posada ended in a free-for-all with the palo. A few practical jokers filled their pinatas with charcoal dust which exploded in the guests' faces. The usual sequel to such unseemly horseplay was a Mexican Donnybrook or "Rosario de Amozoc."*

Tequila & Sparklers. On Christmas Eve, after eight days of posadas, Mexico has its biggest feast of the year. Like the posada, this follows tradition. There is the Christmas salad--oranges, peanuts, lemons, beets, apples, almonds, and anything else at hand--which the father of the family always makes. Tequila is on the table, and in more prosperous homes wine and sometimes champagne. There are sparklers, like the ones in the U.S. on the Fourth of July. Not even the children go to bed, for in Mexico on Christmas Eve nobody sleeps.

On the streets of Mexico, Christmas is the quietest day of the year. For children it is just another day of waiting for the toys that by Mexican custom will come a fortnight later, on Jan. 6, the Day of the Three Kings.

*Years ago, in the village of Amozoc, the townspeople had gathered to say the rosary. One woman stepped on another's shawl. An argument started and soon, without knowing why, the whole village was fighting. Two days later, federal troops stopped the melee.

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