Today we continue our Holiday Season Extravaganza.  Between now and December 25, we will share what it means to celebrate the holidays — Life in Pencil style.

Posted by Elizabeth

Christmas Eve in Mexico is so different than the December 24ths of my childhood.  There were never any hard and fast traditions growing up; rather, each phase of life offered a different touchstone.  When I was very young we spent the evening with my dad’s family, opening gifts in my grandparents’ musty basement, passing through a curtain of vintage beads to get to the Christmas tree.  On those evenings, my dad would point to the blinking lights in the sky – my grandparents lived directly in the flight path of the nearby airport – and would wonder aloud if Rudolph was one of them.  When I got a little older, Christmas Eve was spent at my aunt and uncle’s house, which always boasted – and still does – an enormous tree with outdoor lights slung to and fro on the branches.  There we maintained the Christmas tradition of English crackers, popping the tissue-wrapped cylinder open in a noisy flourish to reveal a paper crown, a charm, and a really terrible joke that no one was smart enough to decipher.   And when I got older still, we fled the suburbs to the comforts of the city, taking in A Christmas Carol at one of the downtown theatres, until my mom decided she couldn’t take one more year of Scrooge.   In those years, I remember dreamy driving tours of West Seattle’s grandest homes, boasting magnificent light displays, and ending the evening over flaky fish and chips at Spud’s – the only fish and chips I’d eat.  Every year was different and, unlike some families who open gifts or go to evening church services, the 24^th always played second fiddle to the main event the next day.

The streets of San Miguel de Allende on Christmas Eve, 2007

In Mexico, Christmas Eve is called Nochebuena; literally, “good night,” a term I’ve always been fond of.  In Mexico, Christmas Eve isn’t just a big deal; it’s the main event.  And when we celebrate tonight, we’ll be following in the footsteps of the generations who have passed before us, because December 24 in Mexico is soaked in ritual and tradition.  First, there will be a posada. In the nine days leading up to Nochebuena, communities throughout Mexico gather to reenact the Holy Family’s search for lodging in Bethlehem.  While public posadas are held, we’re lucky enough to have been invited to a private posada at Pilar’s house, a friend of my mother-in-law’s.  Here, the room will be divided into two groups, each engaging in a “call and response” song, one group asking and the other group denying, over and over again, a room at the inn.  Finally, the Holy Family is granted permission, everyone is joyous, and ponche, a spicy holiday beverage, is served.  I do not know the song Las Posadas, I have absolutely no idea how this will go, but I’m okay with the ambiguity, safe in the arms of tradition.

The last Christmas feast in Mexico did not involve salted cod...which is why I undoubtedly have a big smile on my face.

Afterwards, we’ll eat a traditional Nochebuena feast, the centerpiece a dried salted cod called bacalao, an unfortunate import from Spain.  I can’t say that I’m thrilled about supping on dried salted cod — I would prefer a sweet honey-glazed ham – but I will cheerily eat the cod because I know that, across Mexico, everyone will be sitting down to a version of the same meal, and sometimes it’s more important to be part of something bigger than oneself than to be gastronomically satisfied.

A real nacimiento. You'll notice that "el diablo" is always lurking somewhere in the scene.

At some point during the evening, Baby Jesus will be placed in the household nacimiento, or Nativity.  In Mexico, a Nativity scene – not a Christmas tree – created from clay or plaster figurines, heno (Spanish moss), and other natural elements, is the centerpiece of holiday decorating.  Entire market stalls are devoted to nacimiento supplies, and individual displays can be quite elaborate, ranging from tabletop displays to room-sized affairs.  Jesus’s crib is left empty until Nochebuena, when he is carefully placed in the bed of straw.  In San Miguel de Allende, the community nacimiento fills the central plaza, and when people exit midnight mass from the grand cathedral, a tangled nest of pink spires, they emerge to find Jesus in the manger surrounded by a menagerie of live animals.

In San Miguel's live Nativity!

Christmas Eve lasts well into the wee hours of Christmas morning, the solemnity of what is truly a religious holiday punctuated by celebration.  And it is this tension that makes Christmas in Mexico so dynamic, the hoards of church-goers mingling with bursts of fireworks, posada songs with live burros, nacimientos with roving bands of barking dogs.  The last time we were in Mexico, I don’t remember sleeping a great deal on Christmas Eve, and when I finally drifted off, the roosters began crowing.  It is not a quiet affair, but it is an oddly peaceful one, not defined by gift-giving — which doesn’t happen until Epiphany, in January — but by tradition.

Although I don’t know for sure, I suspect there isn’t a lot of the “doing your own thing” that characterized the Christmas Eves of my youth.  We talk a great deal in our culture about creating our own memories and traditions, and I think that’s important – sometimes for our sanity, if nothing else.  But I think there’s also something to be said for embracing ritual, taking part in the way things have always been done.  Maybe it’s because I don’t have any Christmas traditions that have carried me through the entirety of my life.  Maybe it’s because I wish Christmas Eve represented something more, something magical. Maybe, even in Mexico, that isn’t a realistic thing to wish for.  Maybe I’m being sappy and sentimental and completely unreasonable.  But it’s Christmas, right?  If there’s a time to be sappy and sentimental and unreasonable, it’s today, the good night.

However you spend your Nochebuena, I hope it is a “good night.”  Feliz Navidad!