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-I'm working on a backlog of posts right now, so even though this will be dated early December, it's actually Christmas eve. Bells are ringing from several churches, but otherwise it's a quite night, not much celebrating. It could be too early, or it could be that Mexico just isn't that big on celebrating Christmas.
+On December 9th, 1531 Juan Diego was walking up the hill of Tepeyac, just north of Mexico City, when a woman appeared to him and, spoke to him in Nahuatl, the language of the Aztec empire. She told him she was the Virgin Mary and asked him to have a church built on that site to honor "her native religion".  
 
+Diego then went to the archbishop of Mexico City several times with the message, but the archbishop did not believe him. Finally, three days later, after some other trials, a miraculous death bed recovery, and non-native roses blooming at 7500 feet in December, Diego delivered a shroud with an imprint of the Virgin Mary to the archbishop who finally believed him and thus was born the Virgin of Guadalupe, the Marian vision that is the cornerstone of Mexican Catholicism. 
 
+This, far more than Christmas, is what Mexicans celebrate in December. In San Miguel the neighborhood of San Antonio is home a blessing of the horses, which involves basically every horse in the nearby countryside coming into San Antonio to be blessed. I think. The truth is, we lacked the necessary Mexican sense of patience to see this one through. We saw the horses lined up, but even our horse obsessed daughter was ready to go long before any of them were actually blessed.
 
-I've never lived in a culture that was so hard working an so devoted to family. These are things that I grew up hearing people talk about -- hard work and family -- but I've never actually seen it like I see it here. Which is not meant to denigrate people in other places, hard work is not a zero sum game, but here work and life flow together with no real strong boundaries like you'd find in the States, for example.
+<img src="images/2019/2018-12-12_142407_blessing-horses.jpg" id="image-1807" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2019/2018-12-12_141244_blessing-horses.jpg" id="image-1806" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2019/2018-12-12_142511_blessing-horses.jpg" id="image-1808" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2019/2018-12-12_144759_blessing-horses.jpg" id="image-1809" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2019/2018-12-12_144836_blessing-horses.jpg" id="image-1810" class="picwide" />
 
-My favorite example of this is bus drivers. In the United States if you drive a bus, you wear a uniform and, aside from your face and body shape, you are largely indistinguishable from whomever is driving the next bus. Chances are, when you get off you park the bus and go home. It's not in any meaningful way, your bus or even your work, you are by design an meaningless cog in a profit wheel where most of the profits go to someone other than you. I could make a good case that this is an awful way to live, severely limits your humanity, leads to depression and dissatisfaction with your work and life, and is one of the more profound and overwhelming problems in American culture, but we won't get into that here.
+I never did figure out what Guadalupe has to do with horses, other than she has to do with everything in some way, but I did do a good bit of research on her, in part because I think 300 years from now she  will be the focal point of this religion.
 
-Instead consider the Mexican bus driver. His bus is his bus. Her bus is her bus. The dashboard is given over to shrines of La Virgen de Guadalupe, or whomever their patron saint might be, along with photos of family, friends, wives, children, what have you. Usually there's a crucifix and some pithy quotes about god, country and most importantly, family. Mi familia, Mi Trabajo, Mi Vida, was one I saw. I don't know where the buses get parked at night, but I do know that the next day the same person is driving the same bus. Mi familia, Mi Trabajo, Mi Vida. 
+The story above is the purely Catholic version of events. Alas, any other version of these events, including that of Juan Diego in his own words, is lost to time. I mention this not because I do not believe the story as it is, it is, to my mind, as likely as any other. For historical completeness it might be worth noting though that even most Catholic historians doubt the authenticity of story of Diego. Still I'm happy to accept the story in full, it's the name of the goddess that I think is worth quibbling about. 
 
-For me this helps to make sense of 
+One of the reasons Catholicism was so successful is that no other sect of Christianity is so good at taking what's already in place and tweaking it slightly to fit with Catholic doctrine. And prior to the arrival of the Spanish, the very same hill where Mary appeared to Diego was rather well know for as the home of the goddess Tonantzin, who regularly appeared to travelers. While there is no English translation,  I have seen several second hand sources quote Juan de Torquemada -- whose epic tome *Monarquía India* is apparently one of the more complete histories of early Mexico -- as saying that the goddess Tonantzin regularly appeared to the natives on that hill "in the form of a young girl in a white robe."
 
-> I wanted to test myself. And that long ride nearly beat me. It was so hard. Many times I almost quit but my friends who came with me kept me going. And I kept them going. Many strangers gave us food and a place to sleep. We experienced a big change in our hearts. We learned that our families are our greatest treasure. I want to keep working hard for my family and for Mexico -- Viva la Virgen de Guadalupe! <cite><a href="https://changesinourlives.wordpress.com/2018/12/12/even-blurry-photos-are-worth-a-thousand-words/">a pilgrim quoted on changes in our lives</a>.</cite>
+If you wanted to tweak that existing story to fit Catholic doctrine all you need to do is swap some names and you're away. Next thing you know you're feeling quite justified in tearing down the temple of Tonantzin to build a church for Our Lady of Guadalupe, as she is now known. 
 
+Monotheistic religions that want sole claim to the capital T truth have a hard time accepting this, but religions are always changing, always in flux. Gods and goddesses come and go throughout time. Whatever essential mystery is behind them remains.
 
-k
-Temple to Tonantzin on the hill of Tepeyac
-Before the Spanish conquest, there was a temple of adoration to the goddess Tonantzin, which was attended by settlers from all over the Anahuac country, as the federation of tribes was called. Stories collected by the Spanish friars give an account of this: the Mexicas and other Nahua people believed that on the top of the hill of Tepeyac the mother of the gods appeared:
+I point this out not to mock anyone's faith, but because I find the Mexican version of Catholicism fascinating and a bit confusing because, well it isn't what most Americans or Europeans would recognize as Catholicism. Here Catholicism seems to be the thinnest of veneers over a much, much older set of gods, goddesses and religious practices. 
 
-“The goddess, was very venerated by the natives. According to them, she appeared to one of them at a time in the form of a young girl in a white robe, and revealed secret things to the person “. Fray Juan de Torquemada in “Monarquía India” – 1615.
+But Mexicans are adept at adapting and incorporating, so it all blends and molds together into a cohesive whole that makes sense when you see it, even if you probably couldn't put it in words. Still, everything is changing and I think if you come back in 300 hundred years you'll find worship of Jesus has been replaced with worship of Maria -- and only those of us on the outside would think this odd. Arguably it's already that way. 
 
-Cerro del Tepeyac
+That's not to say Mexico does not celebrate Navidad. It does, complete with lit up trees and all the rest of the trimmings. We were on hand to see the tree light up in Plaza Civica and lights come on in Centro.
 
-Fray Bernardino de Sahagún said in his texts that in the mountain called Tepeaca or Tepeyac, they had a temple dedicated to the mother of all the gods, they called Tonantzin, to whom they made many sacrifices; Men and women from all the regions came saying “Let’s go to Tonantzin’s festivity”.
-The Mexican historian Edmundo O’Gorman warns in some of his notes that by the year of 1530 the Franciscan friars built a hermitage dedicated to the Spanish virgin trying to replace a pagan rite with a Catholic one.
+<img src="images/2019/2018-12-06_195028_tree-lighting.jpg" id="image-1801" class="picwide caption" />
+<img src="images/2019/2018-12-06_195531_tree-lighting.jpg" id="image-1802" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2019/2018-12-06_195537_tree-lighting.jpg" id="image-1803" class="picwide caption" />
+<img src="images/2019/2018-12-06_195852_tree-lighting.jpg" id="image-1804" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2019/2018-12-06_200440_tree-lighting.jpg" id="image-1805" class="picwide" />
+
+We tried the night after to see another tree light up in San Antonio, but we got there a bit late. We were in time to see another round of fireworks though, and somehow I think lights in the night sky will always trump those on the ground.