NM History: Glowing Brown Sacks for Christmas

If you’ve spent much time in New Mexico, especially around Christmas, you are very familiar with glowing brown sacks that adorn walkways, churches and homes each holiday season.

These bags are known as luminarias (light in Spanish) and they date back more than 300 years. The tradition began with Spanish villages along the Rio Grande, but were a little different than the brown sacks we know today. They were small crisscrossed piñon branches that were built in the shape of a square that they then would light and let burn. Some were nearly 3 feet tall. The Spanish settlers displayed the unique lanterns to guide the spirit of baby Jesus to their homes on Christmas Eve.

According to NewMexico.org, “Before the 1872 invention of flat-bottomed paper bags, before the ready availability of votive candles, and before electricity and strings of “icicle lights,” New Mexicans marked the paths to their doors and the local church with small, Sosa-style bonfires on Christmas Eve—symbolically lighting the way for the Holy Family.”

Rather than making lanterns that could hang in trees or from the roof, which could easily be damaged by the wind New Mexico experiences, small bags with a little bit of sand inside were placed along the ground to line pathways and rooftops.

Traditionally, Catholic settlers, who had migrated to the American Southwest from Spain and Mexico, would set out luminarias on the first night of Las Posadas which is a celebration that begins on December 6th. The celebration is a symbolic representation of Mary & Joseph’s journey to Bethlehem and their search for shelter after arriving.

Today, people use luminarias to decorate the path to their door, line the top of their roofline and around the perimeter of their property. They’ve become an iconic New Mexican tradition, and not only do homeowners boast beautiful, warm lighting displays of the unique paper lanterns, but cities in the state do as well.

In fact, you can find luminarias lining walkways and building roofs in New Mexico’s biggest city, Albuquerque, as well as all around the capital of Santa Fe. Two places in particular that many love to visit include the following:

Canyon Road Farolito Walk: In Santa Fe, more than 30,000 people gather at Canyon Road on Christmas Eve to see the thousands of farolitos in the courtyards, galleries, and adobe houses.

River of Lights: The River of Lights at Albuquerque’s Botanic Garden is New Mexico’s biggest walk-through light show, with millions of twinkling lights and luminarias in 500 holiday displays. It’s open nightly from November 30 to December 30, 2019.