December is a period of the year full of celebrations and family events. In many countries around the world, festivities begin on the week around December 25^th. However, Latinos start with some ceremonies way earlier than that.

Most holiday traditions in Latin America have to do with great food and the company of loved ones. Yet, some countries have special habits that make this time of the year a wonderful moment to pay a visit.

In this post, we show you some of their holiday customs. Click here if you want to read it in Spanish.

Candles Day

December 7^th marks the beginning of the holiday season in Colombia. Families, friends, and neighbors light up many ornamental candles on the street.

They do it to honor the Virgin Mary and her Immaculate Conception, which is celebrated the day after.

Posadas or Lodgings

Children in Mexico and Guatemala, among other countries, dress up as Mary and Joseph. They then participate in small parades that go door to door around the neighborhood to find shelter.

Inside, hosts offer them hot beverages, cookies, and some traditional foods such as steamed tamales. To close this ceremony, they hit a big star-shaped piñata.

New Year’s Eve

In many countries around Latin America, people still preserve a very special tradition to bring the year to an end. On New Year’s Eve, they make life-size puppets with cardboard and fabric pieces.

At midnight on December 31^st, they burn the puppets to get rid of all negative things and make a good start to the new year.

Frequently, these figures represent popular characters from the political arena. Every year, this tradition becomes a satirical showcase of today’s society.

Christmas with Warini

Warini is the character who brings Christmas to Honduras. Covered with a mask, he dances at home on Christmas Eve accompanied by a band with drums.

These are just some of the most popular Latin American traditions for the holiday season. You may have spotted some differences with the Spanish holiday habits.

If you want to discover more about Latin customs, take advantage of your Winter Break and sign up to one of our Spanish programs. We are waiting for you!

Christopher Columbus arrived to the Americas for the first time on October 12, 1492. The historic event marks an important change in the course of the history of the Western world, as it lead to permanent contact between Europe and the Americas. The day is officially observed in a variety of ways and called a variety of names in much of Latin America, the US and Spain. 

Read this article in Spanish

October 12 in Spain

Spanish law establishes it as the Fiesta Nacional de España, or the national day of Spain, although many Spaniards continue referring to it as Día de la Hispanidad, which was the former name of the Spanish holiday. The law goes on to explain that the day is commemorated because it symbolizes the expansion of Spanish language and culture beyond European borders. Spanish is spoken by 414 million native speakers, of which only 46 million live in Spain.

When the day was first celebrated in Spain in 1914, it was originally called “fiesta de la raza” in the hopes of creating a holiday that would celebrate unity between Spain and Ibero-America. Just a few years later, the Spanish priest Zacarías de Vizcarra proposed replacing the term raza with hispanidad, a new term coined for the occasion.

October 12 in Latin America

October 12 is still known as el Día de la Raza in some Latin American countries including Mexico. Other Latin American countries however, that once commemorated the day as el Día de la Raza have in recent years changed the name to honor diversity or to celebrate indigenous heritage. In Costa Rica, the day is known as the Día de las Culturas (Day of the cultures), in Argentina it’s Día del Respeto a la Diversidad Cultural (Day of respect of cultural diversity), in Venezuala Día de la Resistencia Indígena (Day of Indigenous Resistance), and in Bolivia Día de la Descolonización (Day of decolonization). In Cuba it is not observed as a holiday. 

Many US states also observe October 12 as a holiday, where it is usually referred to as Columbus Day, but not always; attitudes about how the day should be defined are changing there also. The state of South Dakota for example now celebrates Native American Day on the second Monday of October, and the city of Los Angeles has replacing Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples Day.

October 12 - Spanish Language Day

In 2010, the United Nations declared October 12 Spanish Language Day to celebrate cultural diversity and to encourage the “equal use” of all 6 of the UN’s official languages throughout the organization.

October 12 is observed in different ways in the US and around the Spanish speaking world, where it has been redefined throughout history. Today, Spanish is the second most spoken language in the world in terms of native speakers and it is spoken as an official or main language in 21 different countries.

WE ARE CELEBRATING THE DIVERSITY OF SPANISH. HAPPY "DÍA DE LA HISPANIDAD"!

10 (at least) Christmas Traditions in the Spanish Speaking World

A number of festive celebrations, some religious and some secular, take place throughout the month of December around the Spanish speaking world, where the holiday season often extends well beyond the 24^th and the 25^th.

Countries located in the southern hemisphere that have strong Christmas traditions greet the season in the middle of their summer time, where culinary and decorative holiday traditions are adapted to warmer temperatures, as they are in tropical neighboring countries near or on the equator.

In many Latin American countries it’s common for the Christmas period to extend from the middle of December until well into the new year and beyond King’s Day (January 6^th). On December 7th in Guatemala, they burn an effigy of the Devil, and on that same day in Colombia it’s el día de las velitas (Day of the Little Candles) when candles are placed everywhere to honor the Virgin Mary. In Honduras, Mexico and Venezuela, starting from December 16^th, the nine-day Posadas celebration begins. In many of these places, the Christmas season doesn’t draw to a close until the day of Candelaria on February 2^nd.