Nine Nights of Asking for Room

Las Posadas, "the lodgings", is the Mexican and wider Latin American novena kept on the nine nights before Christmas, 16-24 December, re-enacting Mary and Joseph's search for shelter in Bethlehem. Each evening a procession, sometimes led by children carrying images of the holy travellers, goes from house to house; at each door the pilgrims sing a request for lodging and are refused in song, until at the appointed house they are admitted and the night turns to prayer and celebration, with a pinata, traditionally a seven-pointed star for the seven deadly sins, and food.

The custom developed in New Spain, credited to the missionary friars of the sixteenth century who used dramatised devotion to teach the nativity, and it absorbed and replaced older midwinter observance. The nine nights are sometimes explained as the nine months of the pregnancy. Las Posadas remains a living neighbourhood and parish devotion across Mexico and Central America and among Latino communities elsewhere, culminating on Christmas Eve; it is a clear instance of catechesis turned into a durable popular festival, in which the whole street becomes the stage for the gospel story.