Dia de la candelaria

A few evenings ago, Luisa invited us and a lot of other people at dinner at her place, to celebrate the 'dia de la candelaria', which is Feb. 2nd. (lit: day of the candels)! This day is celebrated in Mexico as part of the catholic tradition, taken from a more ancient Roman tradition:
"Candlemas, feast of the purification of the Blessed Virgin from the "pollution" of childbirth. Following the Jewish custom, as a poor woman she sacrificed two doves to be rendered pure and permitted to be touched by her husband. Candles are blessed. This holiday was appropriated from the Roman feast of Juno-Februa (Goddess of marriage), when girls decorated their pillows with 5 bay leaves to dream of their husbands. Candles were lit in honor of Februa to scare away evil spirits".
In Mexico, this celebration is related to another special tradition: on Jan 6th, people have a dessert which contains little Baby Jesus dolls inside. Whoever gets the dolls, needs to prepare food 40 days later, on Feb.2nd. Usually people prepare tamales.. and Luisa and Mariana produced really a lot of wonderful tamales with every type of fillings! I already explained how to make tamales here, because Luisa once taught me how to do that.
There were pork, cheese, and sweet tamales, with lemon and strawberries. Here is how the inside of the tamales with filled with pork looked like (and in front, a cheese tamales):
And at last just a picture of Lucas and I with Luisa and Jorge, just before leaving: