Make Room: Heart of Las Posadas Navideñas in a World of Crisis

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Jess Galván, a senior content specialist with World Relief, recalls one of her favorite traditions growing up — las Christmas Posadas — a nine-night celebration rooted in Mexican tradition that reenacts Mary and Joseph’s search for shelter in Bethlehem.

As a child, one of my favorite traditions was las Christmas Posadas. I remember holding a small candle, walking with my church community through the cold night, the sweet aroma of hot ponche (Mexican spiced fruit punch) surrounding me while singing call-and-response songs and going door-to-door knocking on our neighbor’s doors. “En el nombre del cielo, os pido posada. Pues no puede andar mi esposa amada” (In the name of Heaven, I beg you for lodging, for she cannot walk my beloved wife). Someone inside would sing back, refusing us entry, “Aqui no es meson, sigan adelante. No puedo abrir, no sea algún tunante” (This is not an inn, so keep going. I cannot open, you may be a rogue).

We’d sing the story of Mary and Joseph’s plea for a place to stay, walking through the cold air, each song getting louder and louder as more people joined with each shut door in our faces until finally, finally, a door opened, and we were welcomed into warmth, food and light. It felt sacred, even if I didn’t yet know why.

Now, as an adult witnessing and hearing about the rhetoric, raids and rejection surrounding immigrants and refugees across the country, I understand the weight of that knock in a new way. Las Posadas Navideñas is not just a tradition in the Latino community. It is a protest. It is resistance. It is theology. It is the gospel story, told through our bodies, from our voices and our longing to be welcomed in.

We Remember So We Do Not Forget

The Bible is filled with commands to remember. Remember the Lord (Duet. 8:18). Remember the poor (Galatians 2:10). Remember that you were once strangers in a strange land (Exodus 22:21). These aren’t sentimental suggestions. They are anchors for the people of God, who so easily fall into spiritual amnesia. We forget not just who we are, but what God has already done and what he calls us to do.

Christmas Posadas disrupts that forgetfulness, a holy interruption. It places us physically inside the story of Christ’s birth — not the sanitized nativity set on a mantle, but the real raw and gritty reality of a pregnant teenager, exhausted and in labor being turned away from shelter. It’s not cozy. It’s desperate.

And that desperation matters. 

The Christmas Posada reenactment mirrors the desperation of so many in our world today — families knocking on the doors of border checkpoints, women carrying children through desert heat, asylum seekers searching for safety only to be met with suspicion, walls or silence.

Las Posadas is the most poignant act of proximity. It’s placing our present back into the past so we don’t forget. It collapses the distance between scripture and now, between Bethlehem and the U.S, between them and us. It trains us to see the Christ-child not only in the manger, but in the margins. In the refugee. In the stranger. In the knock many would rather ignore.

It reenacts the desperation of a family in crisis and forces us to confront our response. Will we open the door? Or will we say, “There’s no room for you here”?

The Crisis of Hospitality

This is not just a reenactment of the past. It is a mirror to our present. In the United States, we are living in a time when refugees are turned away in the midst of the greatest global displacement crisis in recorded history. Over 117 million people have been forcibly displaced worldwide, yet we continue to slash refugee ceilings, enforce impossible asylum restrictions and allow ICE raids to target Latino communities with devastating precision. We are living through policies that deny room at the inn.

The cruelty is not abstract. It has names, faces and ZIP codes. The Latino community has  experienced the trauma of early-morning ICE raids, children watching their parents dragged away, neighbors disappearing without warning. Many of those targeted are longtime residents, contributors to their neighborhoods, parents, caregivers and fellow believers. These are the modern echoes of Mary and Joseph being told there’s no place for them — not because there’s truly no space, but because someone decided they didn’t belong.

This year, that rejection has been codified into law. The “One Big Beautiful Bill,” passed on July 4, 2025, dismantles critical protections for refugees, asylum seekers and other lawfully present immigrants. It cuts off access to SNAP food assistance, strips healthcare coverage from hundreds of thousands, imposes new asylum application fees up to $1,000 per form and pours over $75 billion into detention and enforcement — including provisions for the indefinite detention of children and families. These policies are not just punitive, they are intentionally cruel. They target those already fleeing persecution and trauma, replacing compassion with exclusion. For Christians, this moment is a test of integrity. Will we quietly accept policies that shut the door on the vulnerable, or will we remember who we are — a people whose story began with no room at the inn?

And yet, many churches sing Christmas carols and celebrate Jesus’ birth without reckoning with the fact that Jesus was a refugee. His family fled violence. He was born in the margins. He identified with the stranger, the imprisoned, the hungry. And he told us clearly in Matthew 25 that when we reject the vulnerable, we are rejecting him.

Who Are We in the Story?

In Christmas Posadas, we get to decide who we will be. Some will play the innkeeper, turning the holy away out of fear, nationalism or apathy. Others will stand in the crowd, passive and silent. But some will open the door.

The truth is, we do not need more piety. We need proximity. Jesus did not call us to believe in him from a safe distance. He called us to follow him into the places of pain, to welcome the stranger, to loosen the chains of injustice. Luke 6:46 cuts through our excuses: “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord’ and do not do what I say?”

Let the Church Remember — and Respond

As we enter this season, I want to remind us of something deeper than holiday tradition. The incarnation is God’s radical act of proximity. And our response must be more than sentimentality. It must be solidarity.

Christmas Posadas teaches us that we remember not just with our minds, but with our bodies. We knock because Christ once knocked. We walk because Christ once walked. We welcome because Christ welcomed us first. The reenactment is not the end. It is a rehearsal for real life.

This season, may we not simply light candles. May we open doors. May we remember who we are. And may we live as if the Christ child is still knocking — because he is.

This Christmas season, will you answer the knock by welcoming families in crisis? 

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