Posada
By Laura Closkey
22 Dec 2007 6:19 pm
Klaus arrived yesterday. I met Klaus in Chile 4 years ago. We randomly kept in touch via email, and decided to travel together around Guatemala for these 3 weeks. Klaus is a happy and melo guy and a superb travel partner.
The Sakribal field trip today took us to a Navidad Posada. This is a Catholic Christmas tradition. It´s a neighborhood event. Families from a neighborhood gather at night with a nativity scene on a cart, red candels, whistles and Christmas songs and prayers. They get together for all of the 9 days before Christmas and walk around the nieghborhood and sings songs. At the end of the walk, the story of the nativiy is told, they sing more songs, and and then the children get a pinata. After the pinata is cracked and everyone runs for the candy, some snacks and drinks are served.
I really find it refreshing that the focus of Christmas here is the story of the birth of Jesus, rather than and sitting Santa Claus´ lap in the mall , and shopping in the mall (and on line).