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Posted: Sat Dec 15, 2007 10:14 pm
Sorry if this is the wrong forum or if this thread has been done before sweatdrop feel free to move it, but I'm really interesed on how do you celebrate christmas in your culture/country, for example, I don't understand this "12 days of christmas", why 12 days? and the mistletoe? why do you have to kiss the person you're with if you're under the mistletoe?
I'm from Mexico, and we celebrate 9 feasts before christmas day. They begin on december 16th and finish on december 24th. They're called "posadas", and they're 9 because they represent the 9 months of pregnancy of virgin Mary. It also represents the journey of Mary and Joseph through Bethelem to find a place where Mary could give birth baby Jesus. At a posada, we take the images of Mary and Joseph, and we walk with them like we were in pilgrimage through the streets, then when we are at the door of the house where the posada takes place and we sing a popular song that's supposed to be the request of shelter from Mary and Joseph. When the song ends, the pilgrims enter and the feast begin. We drink punch, and we break a piñata with the shape of a star, that represents the star of Bethelem. In christmas eve we have a dinner with the family and at 12:00 a.m. we celebrate the birth of baby Jesus, and in some places, the nativity scenes are baby-less until december 25th. And well... on that day children open the gifts that Santa brought blaugh but sometimes they get their gifts until january 6th, which is the day of the three wise men
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Posted: Mon Dec 17, 2007 4:21 pm
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Posted: Wed Dec 19, 2007 9:55 pm
thanks for the links, they were really useful, specially that with the 12 days of christmas, that reminds me than in Innocents' day, we make jokes, it's like our april fool's day. And I have new information about the piñata that we break in posadas. I've always thought that it represented the star of Bethelem, but today I found out that I was wrong. The star has 7 points, that represent the 7 capital sins, so the star represents the devil, and the breaking of it represents the triumph of good over evil, so that the fruits that contain the piñata are a prize for that triumph.
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