Page:Face to Face With the Mexicans.djvu/269

Rh The capitol was covered with fluttering streamers, banners and bunting of tri-color, stretched from balcony to balcony, from post to post and from roof to roof. At night the illumination was general. Queretaro seemed wrapped in a mantle of fire. The towers of its church and the roofs of its highest buildings were crowded with flames of different colors that oscillated in the winds. Fireworks were kept up till midnight.

A Mexican Christmas is very unlike one in the United States. No merry jingle of sleigh-bells is heard in this sunny land where the rigors of winter are unknown, and the few lofty peaks, where alone snow is ever seen, would hardly tempt the most adventurous tobogganist.

As there are no chimneys, Santa Claus is deprived of his legitimate and time-honored entrance into households, so the delightful and immemorial custom of hanging up stockings is unknown to Mexican children. But perhaps they enjoy themselves quite as much after their own fashion as ours do. One circumstance in their favor is the long-continued celebration, which, beginning on the evening of the 17th of December and continuing till New-Year's Day, is one long, delightful jubilee.

The celebrations in honor of Guadalupe extend from the 12th until the posadas, or nine days' festivities. The last prayers on the lips of the faithful and the last tones from organ and choir in praise of the patron saint, hardly die away ere the Christmas rejoicings begin.

The word posada signifies an inn, and the whole observance is a relic bequeathed by the Spaniards. The celebration is limited almost exclusively to the capital and the larger cities, and may be considered more as a social feature than belonging specially to the Church—though really combining the elements of both.

It is a reminder of the Nativity, based on the Gospel narrative, but with additions. When Cæsar Augustus issued the decree that "all the world should be taxed," the Virgin and Joseph came from Galilee to Judea to enroll their names for taxation. Bethlehem, their city, was so full of people from all parts of the world that they wandered