Magical Christmas in Mexico City

Mexico City Zocalo Christmas night celebration at ice skating rink.

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.

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.