Avalon to Turn Back 100 Years
Las Posadas Fiesta will revive early California holidays
From the LA Times, Dec 18, 1939Headed by City Manager Earle Pollok and Mrs. Pollok in the roles of El Patron and la Patrona, Avalon will hold its first annual "Las Posadas" beginning Saturday and continuing through Jan. 1. The Colorful customs and costumes of the holiday season of California 100 years ago will be revived.
"The diligencia" (stagecoach and six) will meet visitors at the steamer dock, troubadours will strum age-old melodies and the glad cry of "bienvenidos amigos" will be the order of the day.
Young and old will wear the costumes of California's most colorful era, the mantilla and flat-crowned hat, bright sashes, silver buttons and tinkling spurs for the nine days of merrymaking that will precede each evening the impressive pilgrimage of the "naciemento" in El Encanto, when, bearing a lighted candle, everyone will join in a processional chanting the songs of the "Las Posadas" and file past the shrine in which is depicted the scene of the Nativity.
After the processional there will be wild boar and goat barbecues, songs and street dancing with the days given over to golf and tennis tournaments, games and stagecoach riding. Other features of the nine-day festival will be a barn dance and a costume ball.
