Las Posadas

Asking for lodging in song

The heart of the night is a sung dialogue at the door. UNAM quotes the opening that, it says, almost everyone has recited at some time: “En el nombre del cielo, os pido posada, pues no puede andar mi esposa amada…” (“In the name of heaven I ask you for lodging, for my beloved wife can walk no further”). Britannica gives the song as “Pidiendo Posada”, “Asking for Shelter”; scripture is read and carols, villancicos, are sung at each stop, and the procession is refused, often in song, though the hosts usually offer something to eat and drink.

The songs were in print by 1903. The Library of Congress holds a broadside of that year, Los sueños de las posadas o un magnífico aguinaldo, printed in Mexico City by Antonio Vanegas Arroyo and illustrated by José Guadalupe Posada. Its text has Christmas carols, Latin litanies, “the Posada song asking for lodging” and Christmas songs sung to the tune of the national anthem, and on its back a crowd carries a crèche in a posada procession. Smithsonian Folkways issued a record of the songs, Cantos de las Posadas and Other Christmas Songs, in 1963.

The piñata and its seven points

The piñata of the posadas is a star. INAH describes the first ones as a clay pot filled with fruit and sweets, covered in paper, with seven points that stood for the seven deadly sins; breaking it at the posada meant destroying evil. UNAM Global lists the sins: pride, greed, lust, anger, gluttony, envy and sloth. It adds a reading for every part: the bright colours are temptation, the tinsel the world’s deceptions, the blindfold blind faith, the stick the strength and virtue that destroy sin, and the sweets and fruit inside the riches of heaven, given as a reward for faith. Britannica reads the star differently, as the Star of Bethlehem that guided the wise men; the Smithsonian’s Folklife Magazine gives the seven-pointed star both meanings.

The sins are the friars’ teaching as the Mexican institutions tell it, and the older history of the piñata is told with “se dice”, “it is said”. UNAM Global repeats that it began at New Year in China, that Marco Polo brought it to Italy, where it became a Lenten custom, and that it passed to Spain and then to America; it also reports a claim that the Maya broke a hanging pot of cacao blindfolded. What is documented, it says, is the piñata’s use in evangelisation. INAH calls Acolman the cradle of the piñata, and piñatas are still made there; every year from 16 to 24 December the town holds a Feria de la Posada y la Piñata. Galicia Gordillo notes that the moral lesson has faded, and the piñata is now mostly a game.

Posadas in Guatemala

Guatemalan posadas walk to the beat of the tortuga (turtle), an instrument whose origin Urquizú traces to ancestral times, and over carpets of pine needles. Urquizú describes the old piñatas as clay stars covered with cloth, holding sweets in little boxes and fruit of the season such as manzanilla and jocotes, and gives the same seven sins for the seven points. Several sources, Prensa Libre writes, credit the Hermano Pedro (Brother Peter) with bringing the posadas to Guatemala, walking the streets of Antigua with a group of the faithful. The historian Aníbal Chajón tells it more carefully: the Franciscans were already praying novenas when Pedro arrived in Santiago; his own devotion was to carry the Christ Child from cell to cell for nine nights, and only later was it moved into the streets, with images of Mary and Joseph in place of the child.

Posadas among Mexican Americans and in New Mexico

In southern California, Natalie Amador Solis writes of her hometown, Pico Rivera, posadas often bring horses and mariachis into the processions, children act the pastorela, a nativity play, and there is an aguinaldo to give, a small gift of fruit, sweets and peanuts. In New Mexico the custom almost died out by the 1950s, Nicolasa Chávez of the Museum of International Folk Art writes in El Palacio, and came back in the last third of the twentieth century. The New Mexico History Museum has held Las Posadas on the Santa Fe Plaza since 1982, with congregants from the church at Santa Cruz.

Devils or innkeepers?

Santa Fe’s procession had devils. For decades four of them played the innkeepers, standing on the Plaza rooftops and shouting down “¡No hay posada!” The museum’s director removed them in 2017, with the support of the Santa Cruz group; a longtime nun of the church, Sister Angelina Gonzales, said “The story calls for innkeepers.” The state’s Department of Cultural Affairs brought the devils back in 2018. Chávez, who played the Devil that year, found that the Devil appeared regularly in early New Mexican posadas. His part comes from the eleventh scene of an older play, the Colloquy of Saint Joseph, in which Lucifer sends three demons ahead of Mary and Joseph to turn the householders against them; in Arroyo Seco the night ended with Saint Michael defeating the Devil at the last house. In many places the innkeepers alone came to do the refusing. In 2019 the museum left the choice to the Santa Cruz group, and the devils were dropped; in 2022 the performers voted on it and dropped them again; the Santa Fe New Mexican wrote that they “may be gone for good”.