A popular devotion of Mexican origin, kept in Mexico and throughout Latin America and among Latino Catholics elsewhere. It is a Christmas novena in dramatic form, beginning on 16 December: nine homes or families of the neighbourhood are chosen in advance to be the posadas, the inns. Like the crib and the Christmas play, it belongs to popular piety and prepares the household for the liturgy of the Nativity rather than replacing it.

Arrange nine households in advance, one for each night from 16 to 24 December. Each evening the pilgrims form a procession with candles, carrying images of Mary and Joseph, and sing the traditional dialogue at the door of that night's house asking for lodging. On the first eight nights the household sings back that there is no room; the pilgrims are then let in to pass through the house singing, and the evening ends with prayer, a decade of the Rosary and refreshments. On the ninth night, Christmas Eve, the procession is admitted for good, to a room where the crib has been prepared, and the Child is laid in the manger before all go to the Mass of Christmas.

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