Our son, Tyler, was born the day after Christmas in 1978 while my wife and I were living in Albuquerque.
A few weeks before he was born, I recall going to the obstetrician’s office for what would be my wife’s final checkup before delivery. While visiting with the doctor, he complained that he had spent the last several nights folding hundreds of luminaria sacks to line the streets and surround his house in the old Country Club neighborhood of Albuquerque.
“I would watch whatever NBA games were on TV and fold sacks like some kind of non-stop machine,” he told us.
I secretly worried that his skillful surgeon’s hands and fingers might be out of commission from the frantic activity by the time our son was due.
The Country Club area of Albuquerque was known then and still today for its spectacular displays of luminarias during the Christmas season. Cars still choke the streets of the neighborhood to get a view of the flickering lighted paper sacks lining the streets and adorning the historic homes there.
Of course, these days, displays of luminarias are common in virtually every city and town in New Mexico and the tradition has grown beyond the state.
My display of luminarias peaked in the 1990s when I would put out more than 225 at our home in Las Cruces, including lining the roof of our Southwestern style home. Getting up on the roof these days would be a little more challenging for me, so I’ve stopped doing that. However, with the help of visiting grandkids, we still put out about 150 along our street and lining our driveway and sidewalk on Christmas Eve.
I remember reading something my son brought home when he was in high school which tried to explain how living in Las Cruces was so unique.
“A brown paper bag of sand and a votive candle are considered normal Christmas decorations,” it said.
From my online research, the tradition of luminarias began more than 430 years ago in the state. An entry from the New Mexico History Museum blog has this to offer:
“In a Dec. 3, 1590, journal entry, Spanish explorer Gaspar Costaño de Sosa mentioned the small bonfires his cohorts had lit to guide a scout back to camp. Luminarias, he called them…”
At some point, the word farolitos was substituted for the word luminarias, since the word depicted a small lantern. Sometime in the 1800s, when the tradition of decorating the outside of your New Mexico hacienda at Christmas with small bonfires from your limited pile of winter firewood became a concern, someone came up with the idea of using paper bags, sand and a candle.
In northern New Mexico, many people continue to prefer the word farolitos while south of I-40, the word luminarias has become more commonplace.
Again quoting from the New Mexico History Museum blog:
In the 1930s, as more people got the paper-bag bug, newspaper articles dithered, alternately calling them farolitos, linternitas, and farolillos. In 1958, the august New York Times chimed in, but said Albuquerqueans called them farolitos, further confusing the geography.
Before his 1996 death, Fray Angélico Chavez himself waded into the debate and essentially concluded, “Whatever.”
What I have learned is that whenever I write about “luminarias,” spell checkers are constantly trying to change that word to “luminaries,” which is not a word I would use to describe the wisdom of whoever wrote the spell checker rules.
aero-cordero.com 