Christmas Traditions Essay, Research Paper

In every culture or tradition we have our different ways to celebrate Christmas. In Latin culture we have our unique way to celebrate the birth of baby Jesus. We of course have religious ceremonies as well as our traditional food, like the famous ponche, posole, and tamales. But we also celebrate as whole family members house. We have music, we dance, and of course we stay up all night. The most important way to celebrate our posadas is to have baby Jesus the house.

The posadas are one of the typical events during a Christmas celebration in Latin America. A posada consist of walking and looking for a place where Virgin Mary and Saint Joseph can spend the night and rest before continuing with their long journey to Bethlehem. Two persons usually represent Saint Joseph and Virgin Mary. In this event, all the people of the community come and participate in this mini-recreation. All the people sing, pray, and even cry when asking for a posada. They use candles and incense to accompany these two Saints. They usually walk all over the neighborhood to find a place. They go from house to house asking for permission to stay and spend the night to rest. Part of a posada is to have people denied the use of their house. So Mary and Joseph continue with their search, until they get to the house that lets them stay. This house is usually decorated with flowers, jade, statue of animals and lights. The people offer food for all the participants and music. Pi?atas and contests are also part of a posada. All the children participate in breaking the pi?ata. The adults stay to pray and celebrate that they found a place for Saint Joseph and Virgin Mary.

The families celebrate Christmas by making tamales, pozole and their favorite traditional beverages such as ponche and champurado. The most popular Christmas treat is tamales. To start making the tamales we use dough of corn. We mix this with water and salt. There are two kinds of tamales; one would be sweet tamale. They make this by using pineapple and sugar. The second one is the chili tamale. This tamale is made with pork or beef and chili. Anther favorite Christmas food is pozole. To make pozole you first boil the meat. When the meat is ready add the hominy. The chili is just to give a good and tasty flavor. Some of the typical favorite beverages are ponche and champurado. Ponche is made with all kinds of fruits. The best fruits to make it are guava and apple then we add sugar cane, and cinnamon. Champurado is easy to make. The mix is ready to buy at the store. To mix we add only milk and sugar.

As a family we start celebrating Christmas five-days before Christmas Eve. We start celebrating Christmas Eve by going to Church and having the last posada, as a family. When we come back from church we gather at a family members house. There we eat our traditional food, pozole, tamales, and drink ponche. As the night goes on we joke around, play games, dance, and even sing. When midnight approaches we gather everyone to get ready to open presents and welcome baby Jesus.

To conclude this is how Latin America celebrates Christmas. With our traditional pozadas, and celebrating the birth of baby Jesus. Who could forget our famous dishes tamales, pozole, and our drinks champurado that fills you up till mid-night. Also who can?t forget about the Christmas present? Of course we say goodnight by dancing and singing songs, with our family.