If you're Mexican, you know Christmas is celebrated the 24th and that the 25th is specifically for "el recalentado". "El recalentado" essentially means the after party where everyone eats the leftover food from the day previous. The Christmas celebration party usually starts in the afternoon on the 24th, and continues all night long! The order in which my family does things is first eating (and trust me in any Latino family, food is highly considered and important in our culture). The menu may consist of the traditional:

Tamales

Pozolé rojo or verde with tostadas and sour cream, lime, onion, oregano, sliced radish and cabbage (some use lettuce)

Buñuelos

Enchiladas verdes or rojas with tomato, white fresh crumbling cheese, and cabbage

Ponche

or Chocolate Abuelita

Keep in mind that each state in Mexico and each Latino country celebrates with different foods or different versions! For example, our tamales are made out of corn husks, while there are places in Mexico where people use banana leaves.

There's commotion in the kitchen and you can hear all the aunts and uncles talking. One thing about our culture is that family is an incredibly important aspect of it, and although we just saw everyone last weekend, Christmas is just super special! After spending 6 hours (not exaggerating) in the kitchen eating and talking, "arrullamos el niño Dios". This means we rock baby Jesus to sleep.

This is the most important part of the night. In all of our homes we have installed a nacimiento or nativity scene in English, in addition to our Christmas tree.

In our nativity scene, we have Jose and Maria and an Angel watching over what will be baby Jesus when we come back home from the festivities to put him to bed after rocking him to sleep. In addition, the nativity scene will include the three Kings and a donkey, a bull, and a few sheep. (Some may choose to add a lot of other things, such as other animals, or structures!) And so, everyone brings their baby Jesus along (each family's baby Jesus will vary in size and color)

with a woven blanket to wrap him up to arrive at the house the celebration is taking place at and then when the time comes to rock baby Jesus to sleep, we place each of our baby Jesuses on the blanket and with one person at each end we rock our baby Jesus to sleep and sing a lot of specific chants. In addition, we throw confetti and have sparklers!

(It is important to know that when baby Jesus is rocked, he must be unclothed, as each baby Jesus does have their own custom knit clothing!)

It is on February 2nd that we wake up baby Jesus after He has been sleeping in our nativity scene from Dec 24th to Feb 2nd!

(It is on Feb 2nd when we wake him up from the nativity scene that we put His clothing back on) But after we rock Him the 24th, we all have to kiss him.

After that, we all pass out our treat bags that each household made. These usually consist of tangerines, guavas, peanuts, animal crackers, chocolates and "colaciones"!

In addition, some families/communities celebrate with a posada. These start occurring before actual Christmas, even as early as December 16th.

Of course posadas are different in the U.S compared to Mexico due to the way communities are structures and limitations of resources. Posadas are re- enacting when Jose and Maria are looking for a place to stay with baby Jesus. For example, half of my family will go outside, while half of my family stays inside and we sing chants one after the other, detailing the story. This is kind of like having a conversation but through singing! After this, it is usually around midnight, and it is time to open presents! We all gather around the Christmas tree and the kids especially love this part! The party is just getting started and after this, we dance until we drop! We dance to our Cumbias, Bachata, Rancheritas, Durangense, and all the above! By now, it's probably around 3am and we head back home. But there's no time for sleeping because after a few hours of sleep, we go back at it again and have a relaxing 25th! We sit around the table at the host's house from the night previous, drinking hot drinks in our pajamas and just enjoying spending time with family!

All year round I enjoy and appreciate the presence of my family. But I have to say also, I love my culture and I love my traditions and music and food, and I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world!