Holidays Around the World: Mexico

The Christmas season in Mexico is a special time to celebrate beautiful holiday traditions with family and friends. As much as our family would love to travel to Mexico to experience these holiday customs in person, for the past several years we have been happy to learn about the season with the help of the storytellers at EPCOT.

In Mexico, Christmas celebrations begin in mid-December as families perform Posada processions. In the Posadas children travel to homes of family and friends to celebrate Mary and Joseph’s journey looking for room in an inn.

As the storytellers at Epcot’s Mexico Pavilion have shared with us in the past, celebrations in Mexico take place in the days before Christmas with the Posadas but also after Christmas on Epiphany (January 6^th) which is also called El Dia de los Reyes (the day of The Three Kings). Another symbol also associated with Christmas time in Mexico is the poinsettia plant.

You can learn about all of these holiday traditions from The Three Kings, courtesy of this video from The DIS:

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To extend our learning at home we always look forward to re-reading two very special Tomie dePaola books during this time of year — The Night of Las Posadas and The Legend of the Poinsettia. We have always enjoyed Tomie dePaola’s style of story telling and inspiring illustrations.

   

Poinsettia Craft

Since we live in such a warm climate we are able to enjoy decorating inside and outside with beautiful poinsettia plants.

These beautiful plants really represent the season for us so a few years ago we decided to share a fun poinsettia craft with our friends after attending the presentation with the Storytellers.

Supplies:

• Red and Green felt or paper (you could also use plain paper and color it red or green)
• Scissors
• Pencil
• Poinsettia flower template
• Pipe cleaners 
• Hole punch
• Gold brads or colored pom-poms & craft glue

Using the flower template, trace and cut out flowers from red felt(paper) and leaves from green felt (paper)

Layer one or two flower cut-outs on top of one leaf cut-out (turn them a bit so you can see each layer)

Punch two holes near the center of the cut-outs. Fold the pipe cleaner in half and put the ends of the pipe cleaner through the holes. Pull the pipe cleaner through and twist the long ends to form the stem of the flower.

Place gold brads in the holes or glue pom-poms to the center of the flower.

Three Kings Bread

Of course we like to add food to our holidays around the world celebrations too!  We recently discovered a fun and delicious recipe for Three Kings Bread that our teens are planning to make to extend our learning. You can find the recipe for this and other interesting Holiday Food From Around the World here.

Feliz Navidad!