SALT LAKE CITY — For as long as the Very Reverend Christopher Gray can remember, Las Posadas celebrations have been a regular thing each Christmastime for Utah's Catholics.

"I grew up in Utah, and since my childhood, I remember doing posadas, both at people's houses and also at church," said Father Gray, now the pastor at St. Mary of the Assumption Catholic Church in Park City.

The annual activity, strongly rooted in Mexico and other Latin American countries, commemorates Mary and Joseph's search for lodging on the eve of Jesus Christ's birth. Las Posadas celebrations are spread over nine days, and they return to Utah starting Monday and extending through Christmas Eve, Dec. 24. Several parishes across the state will host posadas on a rotating basis in the nine-day span, with St. Andrew Catholic Church in Riverton hosting the first one on Monday, according to a schedule prepared by the Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City.

"It's a joyful way to celebrate the season," said Father Gray. The population of Latinos in Utah gave rise to the celebrations here, he said, and the posadas events "will always be part of the preparation for Christmas."

While it's a Catholic event practiced in the United States particularly by Catholics of Mexican descent, the varied posadas are open to the public, he said. "It's a very welcoming celebration and, honestly, really quite lovely."

The central activity is a reenactment of Mary and Joseph's search for lodging and the rejection they repeatedly face from innkeepers. Typically groups of participants stand on either side of a doorway that represents the entrance to an inn, singing Pidiendo Posada, which, translated to English, means "asking for lodging."

The song "is a dialogue, and it's the request, 'I'm looking for a place to stay,' and the people inside say, 'There is no room,'" Father Gray said. The two sides go back and forth "until finally the people on the inside relent."

In Mexico, participants may actually travel to several prearranged homes, facing rejection until the last one. In Utah parishes, by contrast, "the celebration often occurs in one building such as the social hall," reads a report on this year's events by Intermountain Catholic, the online news arm of the Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City.

Typically, members of each individual parish organize and carry out posadas, and a girl and boy may be recruited to represent Mary and Joseph. A mass may precede activities followed by food at the end, but the singing of Pidiendo Posada "is really what crystallizes the whole thing together," he said.

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Juan Manuel Estrada, a parishioner at Our Lady of Lourdes in Magna, told Intermountain Catholic that the posadas in Utah are a means of passing Catholic traditions on to younger generations. They're also a means of community bonding.

"Because many of us cannot gather with our families during this holiday season, being able to celebrate them here gives us energy," Estrada said. "We see the people very excited to celebrate the posadas, and we feel very happy."

The schedule posted online by the diocese shows 11 parishes across Utah hosting posadas from Dec. 16-23, with two churches hosting events on Dec. 21 and three hosting events on Dec. 22. All parishes in the diocese have activities on Christmas Eve, Dec. 24.

Separately, the Mexican Consulate of Salt Lake City is hosting a posada event, Posada Tradicional, on Saturday at the Leonardo Museum in Salt Lake City. All entry tickets have already been distributed.

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