Celebrate Holidays in Mexico!
The official religion all over Latin America is Catholicism. Religious holidays are very much a part of daily life in Mexico and all through Latin America. On many occasions the workings of the entire country will stop in order to celebrate a special holiday near and dear to the people. If you purchase a Catholic calendar you will be aware of when these important holidays are, and you can make adjustments according to how you wish to handle the situation.
What better way to show your new acquaintances, clients, or employees that you are culturally aware than to know something about the importance of this list of holidays mentioned below?
Let’s begin with birthdays. Notice that on the Catholic calendar each day has a name of a saint given to it. When a man is born on September 28th, for example, his name will be Miguel or Michael. Sept.28th. is both his saint’s day and his birthday. However he can celebrate two different days if he is not named for the saint on the day he was born. Many times the first born male child is named after the father and the eldest girl child after the mother.
Consequently a girl named Guadalupe may have a mother named Guadalupe or Lupe or Lupita, one of the most popular Mexican names for a girl child, but undoubtedly she was named after the Virgin of Guadalupe who’s saint day is December 12th. You can buy a recording of Las Mañanitas played by a Mariachi band and play it in the lunch room on a big saint’s day and your Hispanic employees will be so pleased that you know about this tradition! What an easy way to show your cultural awareness!
You might even want to purchase tamales and serve them in the lunch room in order to celebrate December 12th. If you play the Las Mañanitas recording, what you are doing is singing Happy Birthday to the Virgin, something all Mexicans traditionally do! It is so easy and so effective! Sometimes the idea of the Virgin of Guadalupe is confusing to non Catholics. The virgin Mary actually appears at different times of the year with different names, even dressed differently but it still is the same virgin. Ask someone who is Catholic to explain this to you. Mexican people traditionally attend an evening Mass on this day to pay tribute to the Virgin, so you might want to take this into consideration when you schedule your people for shifts on this day.
Look for Part 2 of this article, Christmas and other major holidays, next week.
