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Marching toward Christmas

For nine nights, a procession approaches a home and knocks, reenacting Mary and Joseph's journey. Prayer, songs and feasting follow.

By SAUNDRA AMRHEIN
Published December 23, 2005

BRANDON - Carlos Ortiz looked down the street in panic, as one car after another rounded the bend toward his home.

"I think there are going to be more people than I thought," he said, worried about the parking. "Oh, my God."

Moments later, a van door opened and a teenage Mary and Joseph stepped outside, adjusting their veil and beard.

This was the first time Ortiz was experiencing la posada, and it was going to be in his Heather Lakes home.

"It is an honor," Ortiz had said, awaiting the Holy Family's arrival.

Though a rich Christmas tradition among Latin American and Caribbean Catholics, some people like Ortiz, born and raised in Puerto Rico, are discovering the custom for the first time in the United States.

Here, churches with large Hispanic congregations like Nativity Catholic Church in Brandon, are re-creating the tradition by blending customs brought with members from Puerto Rico, Colombia and Central America.

Though the tradition takes many forms, they all commemorate the search by Joseph and Mary for a safe place to stay in Bethlehem before the birth of Jesus.

Every night for nine nights, from Dec. 16 to Christmas Eve, a procession of children and adults approaches a designated house where they knock and are let in. Once inside, they pray, sing Christmas songs and eat.

"We had to mix things because we have so many people from different cultures," said Aracelis Acevedo, one of the organizers from Nativity.

The custom is very popular and elaborate in Mexico and Mexican communities around Tampa Bay, like Plant City. The procession includes a cast of singers on both sides of the door calling and answering to one another in song.

Acevedo and planners nixed that idea for fear that their Hispanic members, mostly Puerto Rican, wouldn't know the songs.

Ortiz, a state corrections officer, said he never celebrated a posada while growing up in Puerto Rico, but he remembers as a child the parrandas - a more secular tradition where a group of carolers and instrumentalists show up at a friend's house after 10 p.m.

Surprised, the host invites them in for a feast and multiple rounds of toasts before the entire group moves on to another house, well into the morning.

Acevedo said posadas, unlike the parrandas, are focused on the birth of Christ, rather than drinking.

"We celebrate our savior being born," she said.

Nativity church started holding posadas four years ago after members pestered Sylvia Caballero: "When are we having a posada?"

Caballero was among one of the first 25 Hispanic families at the church when she moved to the area in 1988. Now she estimates that the church has 400 to 500 Hispanic families.

Caballero researched the posadas and sought ways to include bits of different cultures from each: a Colombian song here, Puerto Rican rhythms there.

Many of the villancicos, or Christmas songs sung by the children in honor of the baby Jesus, are widely known among Latin American countries, Caballero said. Still, the procession songs and prayers can be different.

Outside Ortiz's house in Heather Lakes last Saturday evening, a line of people snaked around the corner on a block of brightly decorated homes. They brought appetizers and greeted each other with quick kisses on the cheek. Acevedo's husband, Ramon, tuned a guitar on the sidewalk. Another man got ready with a cuatro guitar.

"Who's going to carry this?" Acevedo called out, giving charge of the tambourine and maracas to people standing in line. Someone carried a guido, a wooden instrument scratched for sound. Acevedo passed out typed lyrics, so everyone could follow along.

Joseph, cloaked in a long robe, helped Mary with her headpiece, which wouldn't stay in place.

Several women and a teenage boy stood at the front carrying a wreath that bore a standing statue of the Jesus child in red robes reaching his arms heavenward.

A passing pickup slowed down to watch the assembly of about 20 people.

"We ready?" a woman near the front yelled.

The guitars strummed, the maracas shook, the guido scratched, and everyone started singing, "Alegria, Alegria, Alegria," the happiness of Mary and Joseph's passage to a safe place in Bethlehem after many rejections.

Ortiz and his wife, Elba Hernandez, left their front door flung wide open. The group slowly trudged toward it, singing. Once inside, the crowd spread into the living room, around an enormous Christmas tree, into the dining room and along the sofas.

Mary and Joseph took a seat in two white patio chairs.

Ortiz welcomed them, and about an hour of the rosary, Bible readings and festive, tambourine-thumping songs, known as the novena, followed.

Afterward, posada-goers mingled and ate some appetizers while the guitar players geared up for more songs.

Abel Gilbert, 14, who played Joseph, and 16-year-old Sandra Santos, who played Mary, said this was their first posada. Both are members of the church youth group.

"We didn't know what to expect," Sandra said.

Abel's mother, Emperatriz Gilbert, said her son had attended posadas as a baby in their home in Ecuador. He just didn't remember them. In Ecuador, the posadas involved more children, and guests didn't bring food. The host family cooked pork sandwiches, bunuelos, or cheese bread, and hot chocolate.

The Gilberts hadn't attended a posada since arriving in the United States 10 years before, she said. Emperatriz Gilbert canceled all other plans when she learned of it and her son's chance to play Joseph.

The posada was a way to pass on a bit of their heritage to their children, said Gilbert, and Sandra's mother, also named Sandra Santos, of the Dominican Republic.

"It's not just about gifts and lights, it's about something spiritual," Gilbert said.

The posadas also are a piece of home, said Adriana Lozada as she planned to host a posada Monday night.

Lozada, 35 and a family doctor in Colombia, has held a posada every year since arriving in Valrico three years ago with her parents and two sisters. They left behind aunts, uncles, cousins and a grandmother.

"In this time, we are missing our country," she said. The posadas, she said, bring back memories of her childhood.

In Colombia, they call them novenas, she said, and invite family and friends from the neighborhood.

"It's going to be different in the food and the songs and the readings," Lozada said. "I said that is fine. I want to learn different things."

The sharing is exactly what Caballero had in mind when planning the posadas.

"We have diversity but unity also," she said. "No matter where we are from, this is something we can share."

[Last modified December 22, 2005, 09:27:09]