In Mexico, pinatas are not just child's play. They're a 400-year-old tradition
María de Lourdes Ortiz Zacarías swiftly cuts hundreds of strips of newsprint and colored crepe paper needed to make a piñata, soothed by Norteño music on the radio while she measures by feel
By FABIOLA SÁNCHEZ Associated Press
December 22, 2023, 11:04 PM
Traditional Christmas "piñatas" that will be filled with fruit and candy are displayed at a small family-run business in Acolman just north of Mexico City, Wednesday, Dec. 13, 2023. This style of piñata has a religious origin, with each cone representing one of the seven deadly sins, and hitting the globe with a stick is a symbolic blow against sin. (AP Photo/Fernando Llano)
The Associated Press
ACOLMAN, Mexico -- María de Lourdes Ortiz Zacarías swiftly cuts hundreds of strips of newsprint and colored crepe paper needed to make a piñata, soothed by Norteño music on the radio while measuring pieces by feel.
“The measurement is already in my fingers,” Ortiz Zacarías says with a laugh.
She has been doing this since she was a child, in the family-run business alongside her late mother, who learned the craft from her father. Piñatas haven’t been displaced by more modern customs, and her family has been making a living off them into its fourth generation.
Ortiz Zacarías calls it “my legacy, handed down by my parents and grandparents.”
Business is steady all year, mainly with birthday parties, but it really picks up around Christmas. That’s because piñatas are interwoven with Christian traditions in Mexico.
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The pre-Hispanic rite involved filling clay jars with precious cocoa seeds — the stuff from which chocolate is made — and then ceremonially breaking the jars.
More:
https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/mexico-piatas-childs-play-400-year-tradition-105887676