La Posada: the Spirit of Christmas

The Pimas arrived raising dust, with car doors slamming, chil-dren laughing, and dogs barking. I had been waiting for them, an in-vited guest. Everyone bustled over to a small house, gathering before a front door lit by a bare bulb. Eleanore Jay, 77, had been wait-ing for their knock. Tinsel and colored bulbs decorated her liv-ing room. A corn offering hung on the wall. For her, the ritual of La Posada, a reenactment of the search by Joseph and Mary for lodging just before the birth of Christ, was an annual custom an-ticipated with pleasure.

"Ever since it started," she said, "I've been having them come by."

But she was not sure how many more La Posada celebrations there would be for her. On the sixth day before Christmas, she would enter the Gila River Hospital. The prog-nosis was uncertain.

She worried about her son, Reese, who lived next door. In the time since last Christmas, his wife had died and a daughter had been killed in an auto accident.

As we entered her home, I thought about how differently the Pimas observe La Posada compared with the carnivallike celebrations of Mexico. These people were Jay's neighbors, friends, and fellow parishioners. They had come to offer her cheer and hope. They blessed her home. In parting they touched her hand lightly, one by one, as they filed back into the chilly night. They reenacted La Posada once again at the son's home. Half the singers accompanied by guitars remained outside to begin the refrain, Two pilgrims we pray you in God's name for shelter, my poor wife is wearing in cold winter weather.From inside the group responded until finally came the ritual permission, We open our door now. All 18 of us packed the living room, singing carols. Reese Jay looked stricken as the carolers filed past him out the door.

"I do it [La Posada] in my wife's honor," he said. "But it hurts a little, too."

His perseverance touched me. How wonderful to be back for Christmas in a small town like Sacaton where one's successes and sorrows seem to travel on the wind, and where people care. The Pimas pride themselves on caring for neighbors and friends. They have taken in travelers since 1605, when the Spanish arrived and, later, American settlers and adventurers, including legendary Indian scout Kit Carson.

La Posada groups circulate through each of the eight political districts of the rural Gila River Indian Reservation, 30 miles south of Phoenix. During the nine days before Christmas, they perform at more than 425 homes.

On our list was the new tract home of Oscar and Tracy Ortega and their daughter, one-year-old Jasmine. There the news was good, and signs of prosperity were evident. Oscar was employed in Sacaton, the Pima government headquarters, where jobs were scarce. Christmas decorations hung from the ceiling, gift stockings from the wall. The home glowed with colored lights.

"This is something we've done for years, since I was a kid," Tracy explained. "But this is the first time in this house," she added proudly. "We asked them to come and bless it. It's a tradition."

The tradition of La Posada began in Spain, traveled to Spanish America, then was trekked into the northern Indian rancherias by Franciscan missionaries. The Pimas adopted the Roman Catholic custom from the Tohono O'odham, close relations whose reservation borders Mexico.

Eighth-grade teacher Holly Antone, a Pima who lives in Santa Rosa among the Tohono O'odham, had driven 90 minutes over 50 miles of rural road to join the Saca-ton carolers. Tohono O'odham groups had brought La Posada to her home. She en-joyed the spectacle and decided to join one in Sacaton, where she was born.

"When I come here," she said, "I know how to do it."

The Sacaton group did not practice beforehand. "We just got together and started singing," said Carol Jackson: "A lot of the adults are in the Christmas choir, and the children learn the same songs in school."

The La Posada carolers crisscrossed Sacaton, home to 5,000 Pimas, night after night, acting out the Holy Family's search for lodging. They were expected. I was a stranger, but welcomed.

Darkness was closing around low mountains to the east when we arrived at the home of Delvin Davis, a tribal substance-abuse counselor, and his wife, Thelma.

Their house blazed with a spotlighted Santa, reindeer cutouts pranced on the roof, and dozens of colored bulbs blinked along the eaves. To the north, Phoenix with its high-rise buildings seemed far away.

The Pimas have broadly adopted Christianity. However, drums sometimes accompany lay services. And some still cling to the traditional spiritual beliefs.

With a battery-powered tassel, blinked like a beacon in their midst.

"I had never seen the ceremony before," Hill said. "It's just beautiful."

On another night, we accepted an invitation to join a La Posada group making the rounds in Bapchule from St. Peter's Church and School mission, located in an intensely farmed district where the family of Iwo Jima flag-raiser Ira Hayes once lived. As we set out from the mission, a huge United States Marine Corps standard stood straight out in a Sonoran wind whipping through the Pima cemetery across the street.

Two blocks away, La Posada carolers arrived at the home of Glenn Hayes, a distant cousin of Ira. The family sat arrayed on a couch in the living room. We squeezed in and surrounded them with song. Later I asked about Ira's family.

"They're all gone; they all died," Hayes said. "The [Ira Hayes] place is closed now."

The Bapchule La Posada reenactments stressed ritual more, the carolers sang more songs, and stayed longer. Even more so than in Sacaton, the Pimas at Bapchule are closely tied by marriage and blood kinship. In every house we visited, someone was related to one of the La Posada carolers.

The living room of Henrietta Antone, 63, and her husband, Manuel Hernandez Sr., 59, was brimming with people for La Posada. She had 10 children, 31 grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. Many of them had come for the caroling.

"I would like my house blessed so everything will be all right," Antone said. "It should help us to be better for the next year."

I had always wanted to see inside a Pima "sandwich" house of adobe reinforced with exterior wood lathes. They are reportedly cool in summer, warm in winter. Melvin Webb, 61, and his wife of 30 years, Elizabeth, 59, invited us into theirs.

Even though their two children were grown, and they now lived alone, La Posada had become an annual affair looked forward to. "We have them [the carolers] come every year, wherever we are," Elizabeth said.

I could smell the delicious scent of gingerbread wafting from the kitchen of Flores Kyyitan before we got inside. Candy-filled stockings hung on the wall. In the living room, regal and seated ramrod straight were George Kyyitan, 83, and his wife, Dorothy, 72. Theirs was the first Indiansounding surname I had encountered among the Pimas.

Franciscan Sister Juana Lucero, a Pima who teaches the Pima language as a cultural experience class for Bapchule grade-schoolers, resolved the mystery. Missionaries, she said, renamed all the Pimas in 1922.

"They made them go to the headquarters in Sacaton and gave them English names," she said. "The names were put on government lists, and as they baptized the children, they gave them English names. The Spanish were on the south end of the reservation, and those Pimas got Spanish names.

"That's when all the dances disappeared," she lamented. The missionaries "made the Pima women wear Mother Hubbard-style dresses, which made dancing impossible."

The Pimas have broadly adopted Christianity and rituals like La Posada. Catholics, Presbyterians, and Baptists predominate. However, drums sometimes accompany lay services. And some still cling to the traditional spiritual beliefs.

I learned from Sister Ann Fischer, who lives in Sacaton and serves as a Catholic pastoral assistant to the Pimas, that several men still perform smoke blessings and infant initiation ceremonies. Shamans still attract followers.

Such things seemed far apart from La Posada reenactments and houses strung with lights, as the Pimas devoutly celebrated Christmas renewal and hope. But I had not missed noticing that in nearly every house we visited, there were corn offerings to old spirits.