Get in the holiday spirit: Christmas in Mexico means las posadas--seasonal parties designed to bring neighbors together.

Is it possible to sample centuries of history in only nine days? Yes, if you spend Christmas in Mexico, home to las posadas--a unique celebration born in colonial times and repeated every December.

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The faithful see the series of small family-oriented Christmas parties as proof of Mexico's strong Catholic faith, but for others they are a way to develop a closer relationship with others or meet new people or neighbors.

From Dec. 16 to 24, Mexican families recreate the biblical struggle of the Virgin Mary and her husband Joseph, as they looked for lodging in Bethlehem. The story goes that after a long search Mary finally gave birth to Jesus Christ in a stable.

Traditionally posada participants walk in the streets carrying tiny figurines of Mary and Joseph while knocking on doors and searching for a place to stay, as the Bible says the couple did 2,000 years ago. In their search for a posada, or literally guest home, the celebrants sing Christmas carols. After being rejected two or three times, participants finally arrive at the house where the party is planned.

However, today this is much less common, and posadas generally refer to any Christmas party, with the only religious aspect being the decorations.

MORE THAN A CANDY HOLDER

Each night of the posada ends with breaking a pinata, a large cardboard figure adorned with brightly colored paper. The pinatas are filled with fruit and candy and blind folded guests use a stick to try and break it open so its contents fall to the floor.

"The blindfold represents the blind faith that Mexicans have in God," explained Homero Avila, an anthropologist who studies popular culture in Mexico. "The stick means the help of God and breaking the pinata the fight against sin."

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Pinatas made especially for posadas have seven points, with each point representing a sin.

"When fruit falls over the guests, it means that God's grace has reached everybody," Avila said.

Pinatas are broken each night until Christmas eve, when Mexicans celebrate Christ's birth by sharing traditional dishes and drinks such as ponche, a juice made from lemon leaves and boiled fruits such as guayabas, tamarinds and prunes.

Among the traditional dishes are romeritos (mole with nopales), bacalao a la vizcaina (cod) and the Christmas salad, a mix of cooked beets, apples, oranges, mandarins, bananas and peanuts with lettuce.

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In almost every Mexican home, the main decoration for Christmas is a miniature of the stable where Christ was born, surrounded by clay or plastic figurines, representing the Three Kings, shepherds and their flocks and farm animals.

Another symbol of Mexican Christmas is a bright red plant known as the poinsettia, but it also has deep roots.

Among pre-Hispanic tribes of ancient Mexico, the plant was called the cuitlaxochitl and it was more than just pretty. The blood-red leaves were often placed on the chests of those suffering afflictions of the heart to help stimulate circulation. They were also crushed into a pulp to be used as a poultice to treat skin infections.

Dec. 28, the Day of the Holy Innocents, is a religious commemoration of King Herod's order to slaughter all male infants in his kingdom, a move intended to kill the Christ child.

In Mexico, it is marked by a day akin to April Fool's, an occasion for jokes and pranks. The usual tactic is to approach a friend and ask to borrow cash or something valuable. If fooled by the ploy, the victim may be given a candy or silly gift in return, along with some joking and name-calling.

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The posadas have a special charm for foreigners living or visiting Mexico.

"I have never seen anything like it," said Amanda Lluvichusca, an Ecuadorian master's degree student who lives in northern Mexico City. "They give food and drinks to everybody, even to those who are only walking in the streets get to smack the pinatas. Everybody gets involved."

She is not the only one who finds Mexico's Christmas celebrations unique.

"In Mexico, Christmas is completely different," said Claudia Benitez, 21, a Mexican who lived in Dallas since she was two years old and last year returned to live with family and get in touch with her roots. "There are not many gifts, but a lot of fun and faith."

CHANGING TIMES

Benitez said she was most surprised when she saw that Mexican homes, with the exception of a few places downtown, were not decorated with lights and plastic snowmen like in the United States.

Benitez added she was somewhat disappointed because the posadas, which she celebrated for the first time last year, seemed different than the stories told by her parents in Texas. "I feel las posadas are not like my parents remembered."

That appears to be because the celebration is changing over time.

"Only a few years ago, posadas took place in theaters and night clubs, not just in private homes like we do today," wrote the late Sebastian Verti in his book, "Tradiciones Mexicanas." "Sadly, neighbors of the same community do not gather anymore to arrange posadas, neither do they pray as before".

For some people, las posadas have fallen victim to economics.

"Putting on a posada requires cooking several dinners for many people--a cost that many families cannot afford these days," said Yolanda Infante, who has organized posadas for 45 years in western Mexico City.

"Everything is more expensive now," she said. "Today is not like before when with a little money you could cook for a lot of people."

Lucia Bueno also believes posadas are not the same. "Even when the news says the economy has improved, I feel that numbers are one thing and reality is another," she said. "I stopped making posadas because even when I wanted to spend just a small amount, it ended up being expensive."

Posadas have also lost ground to foreign cultures that fill the media with images of Christmas trees, turkey dinners and show fat Santas giving out sophisticated gifts.

"I believe that posadas are less popular among wealthy Mexicans," said Benitez. "Wealthy people like the American lifestyle, so they enjoy the American Christmas too. They change the stable scene for a bright tree and hand out gifts on December 25 instead of January 6," referring to the day three kings were said to have arrived in Bethlehem with gifts for baby Jesus. Still, many children throughout Mexico anxiously await Three Kings Day to find the gifts the kings left.

WATCH WHAT YOU EAT

A special treat served on this day is the Rosca de Reyes, a crown-shaped sweet-bread decorated with jewel-like candied fruits. Tiny figures of babies are hidden in the dough before baking. Each partaker cuts his or her own slice. But the pressure is on as whoever gets a piece containing a baby is obliged to host another party on or before Feb. 2, the day of the Candelaria.

Each year, these traditions seem to be less common in the big cities. Duenas believe this is because people who move to cities don't have interest in their communities.

"Even in my grandmother's neighborhood, a very old-fashioned place, posadas are less popular every year," she said.

For anthropologist Avila, the changes that Christmas celebrations are experiencing follow a natural transformation process.

"We cannot say that las posadas will disappear, they just are moving to another point in their history like all traditions do," he said.

And the history of posadas is full of changes.

They originated during colonial times, when indigenous people, each winter, celebrated the war god Huitzilopochtli. Spanish clerics, trying to convert them to Catholicism, substituted the war god's image for Joseph and Mary.

"They changed the characters, but kept the celebration in the same month," noted a special Christmas report in the newspaper Diario de Yucatan. "Like an extra attraction, the Spanish added to the celebration pinatas and Christmas songs."

At the time posadas take place, Mexicans hold a related celebration, las pastorelas (shepherd's plays) that are performed by amateur and professional groups in schools, theaters and homes, where posadas are taking place.

Pastorelas tell of the shepherds' adoration of baby Jesus. First, they are visited in the fields by an angel who announces the holy birth. As the shepherds attempt to follow the great star leading them to Bethlehem, they are plagued by a series of evils and misadventures provoked by the devil. But in the end, good triumphs over evil and the shepherd's reach their intended destination.

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RURAL CELEBRATION

But las posadas has not fallen to historical transformation or economic crisis everywhere in Mexico. In small towns, they are a major event where the entire community gets involved.

"In Pajacuaran [a village in the central state of Michoacan], posadas are for everybody," said Silvia Montes de Oca, a saleswoman who was born there but now lives in Mexico City.

"Every night, residents of a different street cook for the entire town. They put out tables, they pray and play music for nine days," she said.

Even in the most remote towns, residents will arrange a scene of Christ's birth and prepare for las posadas, said Avila. "I know they will endure change."

Isabel Ordonez is a Mexico City-based freelance writer.