Today is the beautiful Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. In 1531, Our Lady appeared in Mexico to a poor Indian, Juan Diego, at a time when human sacrifice was commonplace.
The following is an excerpt from a website with interesting background information and many images to download: www.sancta.org
“After complying to the Bishop’s request for a sign, She also left for us an image of herself imprinted miraculously on the native’s tilma, a poor quality cactus-cloth, which should have deteriorated in 20 years but shows no sign of decay 478 years later and still defies all scientific explanations of its origin.”
Saint John Paul II named Our Lady of Guadalupe the patron saint of the unborn.
To read more about Our Lady of Guadalupe:
http://www.sancta.org/intro.html
There are many ways to celebrate this feast. Our family usually has a Mexican type dinner like tacos or fajitas. Although our kids are older now, in past years, we have celebrated by allowing them (youngest to oldest) to break open a pinata.
What does your family do to celebrate this beautiful feast day?
Plot Line and Sinker (Ellen Gable, Author) 
We always drink hot chocolate. The Queen of Heaven is no dummy. She made sure God sent her on a trip to the country that gave the world chocolate! We always sit around our mugs of cocoa and retell the story of La Guadalupana, the heavenly princess with the cocoa-brown skin.
Thanks, Erin! I love the idea of sipping hot chocolate and retelling this beautiful story!!
Such a beautiful post, Ellen. In my town,
where there is a significant Mexican population, a Mass is celebrated at midnight in one parish and very early in the morning in another. Men and women serenade the Virgin on guitars and violins and at the morning Mass, everybody drinks hot chocolate, just as Erin McCole Cupp said.
Thank you, Marianne! How wonderful!
Such a beautiful post, Ellen. In my town, where there are many Mexican immigrants, a Mass is celebrated at midnight or very early in the morning. Men and women serenade Our Lady with guitars and violins. After the morning Mass, everybody drinks hot chocolate.
I celebrated by attending Mass and ordering take-out Mexican food for dinner. It was such a beautiful post, Ellen. And I like the pinata for your sons when they were small. When I was a catechist, we had one at Christmas time and the children were so exicited.