Festivals & Events, November 24, 2006

Excerpted from “The Best of San Miguel de Allende”© by Joseph Harmes. Reprinted with permission. 


Friday, December 8: Festividad de la Inmaculada Concepción (Feast of Mary’s Immaculate Conception). Also known as La Purísima Concepción de María Santísima, Mass is celebrated and the Mother of Jesus worshipped at La Iglesia y Convento de la Concepción. One of the town’s patron saints.

Tuesday, December 12: Día de La Virgen de Guadalupe (Feast of the Virgin of Guadalupe). The unofficial holiday celebrates Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, the madre of all Mexicans. A novena begins Dec. 3, with fireworks nightly, especially at the church in the Colonia Guadalupe. At 11 p.m. on December 11, a mariachi Mass is sung at La Iglesia de San Francisco. The next day, Guadalupanas decorate altars around town, especially at the markets, and girls named Guadalupe are feted. The Catholic Church prefers to say Guadalupe is, strictly speaking, the name of a picture which represents the Immaculate Conception. The Blessed Virgin appeared on Dec. 9 to an Indian, Juan Diego, on a hill outside present-day Mexico City. He told a bishop of the visitation, who demanded a sign. The Virgin appeared to him again and told him to gather roses. Although out of season, Juan Diego somehow found them. Gathering the flowers in his tilme (a coarsely woven material, like sack cloth)., he returned to the clergy and unfolded the c
loak. The roses fell out and the bishop and priests fell to their knees before him: The life-sized figure of the Virgin, as he’d described her, glowed on the cloth, which today hangs in the Basilica in Mexico City. In 2002, Juan Diego was anointed sainthood. The morena (brown-skinned) Virgin of Guadalupe was accepted as an Indian deity, giving the Spanish Church an instrument of control over its subjects. One of the town’s patron saints.