Moving to Mexico: Christmas in Querétaro

Plaza de Armas at Night

It would be impossible to explain what happens in Querétaro at Christmas in anything less than a book. Every night since December 12, Virgin of Guadalupe Day, the city has organized an event at Zenea Garden. This can be a chamber music ensemble, a choir, a pastorela from a school or club, an estudiantina, or whatever. Zenea has been decorated with Christmas scenes, including a vision of hell complete with flames and demons with pitchforks, a traditional indigenous Christmas, a nativity scene, the three wise men’s encampment complete with elephant, camel and horse (different bible, I guess) among other things. Here are some pictures of Zenea Garden. All the other gardens and plazas also had something almost every night.

Part of an image of hell at Jardin Zenea.

I missed the horse and elephant, but here's the Three Wise Men's camel.

In addition, every school, club, church, or group has a posada or pastorela or party or public display. We have been to Mozart’s Requiem with the Querétaro symphony, to a chamber music concert with the symphony, and to a piano and soprano recital at the Teatro Nacional. One of the best was a mariachi concert of Mariachi Vargas, the “original” mariachi band in Mexico, with the symphony playing back-up. The auditorium was packed with people who knew most of the words to the songs, and we even knew the words to a couple. There were plenty of otras, encores. There have been weddings, sometimes several a day, at the more popular wedding churches, everywhere people are carrying loaded piñatas headed to parties, the peddlers are selling everything under the sun in the streets, and the streets are periodically closed and turned into outdoor restaurants with no prior notice.

Last night, we went to the Christmas parade which had commemorative floats celebrating the year of the anniversaries. 2006 was the year of the 475th anniversary of the founding of Querétaro, the 375th anniversary of the apparition of Our Lady of Pueblito (the “queen and protector of Querétaro”), the 350th anniversary of the naming of Querétaro as the “most loyal and noble city of Querétaro de Santiago” by the king of Spain, the 200th anniversary of the founding of the parish of Santa Ana, the 180th anniversary of the biblical parade of Querétaro which will be held tonight and which was the precursor of parades with floats in the city, and the 100th anniversary of the library of Sagrado Corazon and the Eiffel Kiosk in Zenea Garden (yep, that Eiffel). After we have dinner with Sophie and Pierre and their kids, who are here for Christmas, we will go to the parade of biblical floats. And of course, I expect to get a phone call from Mamita wanting to be picked up at the bus station from the airport. Another full day.

Oh yeah, a pastorela is a typically Mexican play based on the Christmas story but which now includes devils, in addition to the angels and shepherds, and which is laced with political comment, double entendres, and some weird turns such as Zorro (our Spanish teacher, Alberto) leading the shepherds back to their wives who have headed on to Bethelem without them. An estudiantina is a group of young people, students, who dress in medieval university outfits, and wander around playing mandolins and guitars and singing traditional songs and ballads. A piñata is a container, originally a clay pot and still is sometimes, filled with candy and goodies for kids made to look like the President, or a star, or a donkey, or whatever, that is especially popular at Christmas. The kids break the piñata with a stick to get the goodies.

Breaking a piñata at Jardin Zenea.

And a posada is a ceremony that involves people in a neighborhood or street who go from house to house singing a traditional song to be allowed in “as there is no room in the inn”. This happens every night for the nine nights before Christmas. People inside the houses, sing back to them that there is no room and they should keep moving. Finally at the last house, they are allowed in and there is a party which is preceded by reciting Hail Mary a few times in the more traditional areas. The next night, it is someone else’s turn to host the party. We helped Bob and Maria who are padrinos (godparents) of the posada group in their neighborhood and who hosted the final posada party at their house a couple of days ago. Bob’s piñata , a big black spider, was especially popular with the 15 or so kids in the group. The next day I visited our “new” house, and found out that there had been a posada in our street the same night, and people had wanted to use our house’s electricity to help with the neighborhood decorations, but they could not since we weren’t there. Next year, I guess we will have our own posada to help out with. Ours will be organized by La Cruz church, while Bob and Mary’s was organized by the people in her street. There is a lot more that I won’t write down here, enough, in fact, to fill a book.