Novena of Aguinaldos, also known as Novena to Baby Jesus occurs 9 days before Christmas and is celebrated in Colombia. My host brother’s girlfriend is from Colombia. She lives here but she wants to do her traditional Christmas, so she invited people nearby to come to celebrate this, 9 days before Christmas from December 16 to December 24. The way we did it was we had to go to somebody’s house and prepare food for them. You switch houses every day, but you can return to the same house more than once. Things that are traditionally recited in Spanish had to be translated to English, so people can understand it. We all sat together and had some instruments in our hands because we had to sing a song after we read everything. You can dress up in traditional Christmas clothes or wear a headband or whatever you want. Start with someone who is willing to pray to get things started. Then everyone who is willing to read rotates until it ends. Then we started singing this song:

Come come come….come baby Jesus to our soul 

Come baby Jesus to our soul

Come baby come baby Jesus 

Come baby Jesus come come come

I feel like it was really fun that we had a chance to celebrate another country’s traditional holiday and experience a new thing for everyone. It was a good way to spend time together and have a conversation.