Mexico
City will look its best during the Christmas season. The city will have
traditional and more modern celebrations to celebrate Christmas and New Year's Eve.
For this closing of 2023, the city authorities will offer places and activities
to be noticed by all visitors to the capital: children, young people, adults,
and seniors.
In
the south of Mexico City is a charming neighborhood called Chimalistac. Walk
its cobblestone streets and discover its picturesque corners, including the old
Chimalistac Square, now Plaza Federico Gamboa. And if you go, be sure to visit
the Espacio Escultórico, just 10 minutes away. It is inside Ciudad
Universitaria, where you can also see how art and nature coexist in harmony.
Santa
Fe, Paseo de la Reforma, Chapultepec, Zócalo, the Monument to the Revolution,
Coyoacán, San Ángel, and the Basilica, as well as Xochimilco and Polanco, are
some of the most attractive metropolitan areas for tourists. And in each of
them, recreational and cultural activities have been prepared to celebrate
December 25.
The
Basilica of Guadalupe is in the north of the city, in the municipality of
Gustavo A. Madero, while in the Historical Center, the Metropolitan Cathedral
usually organizes choral groups that perform Christmas carols and traditional
Mexican songs that recall the Nativity of the Child God. To the south, the
parish of San Jacinto, the former convent of El Carmen in San Ángel, and the
Church of San Juan Bautista in Coyoacán stand out for their altarpieces,
colonial architecture, and nativity scenes.
Polanco
has become a well-known residential neighborhood for its exclusive restaurants
and hotels. These places, along with other commercial establishments, are
adorned during December with attractive decorations of Christmas Eve flowers
and traditional and popular nativity scenes.
Very
close to Polanco is the ancient Bosque de Chapultepec, once Moctezuma's garden
and zoo. This beautiful, gigantic site, twice the size of Central Park, is an
urban park. It is the largest urban park in Latin America and one of the most
visited in the world. There, you can see the Audiorama. This hidden corner in
Chapultepec (a short name used by the locals) is the ideal place to escape with
your favorite book and enjoy a moment, surrounded by beautiful trees and a
first-class musical atmosphere. This Audiorama has eight speakers and benches
to relax while listening to musical programming that varies according to the
day of the week.
And
in this beautiful forest, you must visit the Tláloc Fountain, another of
Chapultepec's little-known corners. It is a magnificent and spectacular
fountain dedicated to Tlaloc, the Mexica god of rain. The Cárcamo de Dolores,
in the second section, houses in its interior the mural -originally underwater-
of The Water, the origin of life by Mexican muralist Diego
Rivera.
Six
Flags is a popular and well-known amusement park for domestic and foreign
visitors. For the Christmas season, from November 24 to January 14, 2024, it
has been prepared as the most incredible and joyful entertainment, which, year
after year, it carries out and which, on this occasion, returns to illuminate
and fill the place with magic. It is in the south of the city, in the direction
of Ajusco Hill, in the municipality of Tlalpan.
In
the Historic Center, the heart of the CDMX, the traditional Verbena del Zócalo
(Zócalo Festival) has been prepared, an event that transforms the city into a
vast Christmas fair with all kinds of attractions. Other years, it has included
mechanical games, spectacular and colorful lighting with Christmas motifs, an ice-skating
rink, live music, and pastorelas (theatrical representations of the birth of
Jesus Christ), which will last throughout the second half of December, will be
free, and will last until the first days of January 2024, from Monday to Sunday
and from 10:00 to 22:00 hours.
Near
the historic center, take a walk through the Moorish kiosk. It is in the center
of the Santa María la Ribera neighborhood, one of the neighborhoods worth
visiting during these vacations. This place was one of the first neighborhoods
built in the times of the Viceroyalty beyond the original layout of the CDMX. A
must-see is its Alameda, which houses the beautiful Moorish kiosk in the
center, an indisputable symbol of this neighborhood.
Metropolitan Cathedral in Zocalo. (Photo Credit: Byelikova_Oksana / iStock Editorial / Getty Images Plus)
For
the adult public, Mexico City offers the show Christmas in Mexico by the Ballet
Folklorico de Mexico de Amalia Hernandez, which presents an ideal show to
celebrate Mexican culture and traditions through dance. It is a compilation of
several typical Mexican dances, such as the Danza de los viejitos from
Michoacán, the Jarabe tapatío from Jalisco, and La Culebra from Tlaxcala, that
tell a story in three acts related to the Christmas holidays.
The
UNAM Philharmonic Orchestra, under the direction of guest conductor Jesús
Medina, will offer its Christmas Concert in its third season this year. The
Children and Young Singers of the Faculty of Music of the UNAM, led by their
choral director, Patricia Morales, will also participate in the concert.
The
OFUNAM will offer a perfect musical selection, beginning with the iconic
Messiah by George Frideric Haendel. This baroque oratorio continues to amaze
more than 280 years after its premiere. It will also perform Arcangelo
Corelli's Concerto Grosso Op. 6 No. 8, known as the Christmas Concerto, which
evokes the birth of the baby Jesus.
The
Christmas Sonata by Miguel Bernal Jiménez, an original piece for organ
orchestrated by Uberto Zanolli, will also be presented, as well as a selection
of different Christmas carols that ensure a concert full of joy and Christmas
spirit. All this will occur in the Nezahualcóyotl Hall of the Centro Cultural
Universitario, inside Ciudad Universitaria, south of Mexico City.
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