A Month-by-Month Mexican Fiesta Calendar, and What Gets Cooked for Each

We have written about the individual Mexican celebrations at length: Christmas, Day of the Dead, Cinco de Mayo, Lent and Holy Week and how to host a posada. What has been missing is the thing that holds them together: a single calendar you can look at in March and know what is coming, because the Mexican food year is a chain of specific dishes attached to specific dates, and several of them need ingredients ordered weeks ahead if you are cooking in Britain.

This is that reference. Each entry is the date, the occasion and the dish that is genuinely expected on the table, followed by what it takes to do it here.

The year at a glance

Date	Occasion	What is cooked
6 January	Dia de Reyes	Rosca de Reyes, hot chocolate or atole
2 February	Dia de la Candelaria	Tamales, atole, champurrado
Movable, Feb or Mar	Carnaval	Regional: seafood on the coasts, buñuelos, local sweets
Forty days from Ash Wednesday	Cuaresma (Lent)	Meat-free: tortitas de camaron, romeritos, nopales, lentils
Holy Week, movable	Semana Santa	Capirotada, chiles rellenos, dried prawn fritters
5 May	Batalla de Puebla	Mole poblano and chalupas, in Puebla
10 May	Dia de las Madres	A family comida: mole, barbacoa, whatever she asks for
Mid to late July	Guelaguetza, Oaxaca	Tlayudas, seven moles, mezcal, chapulines
Through August	Chile en nogada season begins	Chiles en nogada, as the walnuts and pomegranates arrive
15 and 16 September	Independencia	Chiles en nogada, pozole, pambazos, tequila
1 and 2 November	Dia de Muertos	Pan de muerto, mole, tamales, the dead's favourite dish
12 December	Virgen de Guadalupe	Tamales, atole, buñuelos at the shrine
16 to 24 December	Posadas	Ponche, buñuelos, tamales, hot punch with a measure of spirit
24 December	Nochebuena	Bacalao a la vizcaina, romeritos, ensalada de Nochebuena, turkey
31 December	New Year	Twelve grapes at midnight, lentils for luck, leftovers

January: the rosca, and the debt it creates

On 6 January families buy a Rosca de Reyes, a ring of enriched bread decorated with candied fruit, and cut it together with hot chocolate or atole. Baked inside are one or more small figures of the infant Jesus. Whoever finds one in their slice is obliged to provide the tamales on 2 February, which is how the Mexican calendar enforces its own continuity: January's dessert creates February's dinner party.

In Britain the roscas appear in Latin American bakeries and some Spanish delicatessens from late December, and several UK bakeries now take orders. Making one is a straightforward enriched dough if you have made a brioche, with candied orange and quince paste on top.

February: Candelaria, which is a tamal festival

Forty days after Christmas, Candelaria marks the presentation of the infant Jesus at the temple, and in Mexico it means tamales in quantity, paid for by whoever found the figure in the rosca. Thousands of them, in every regional style: green with chicken, red with pork, sweet pink ones with raisins, mole tamales, and the leaf-wrapped versions from the south. With atole or champurrado, always.

This is the one date in the year where the British constraint bites hardest, because it needs maize husks, masa and lard all at once, plus two or three hours. Order husks and masa harina in January. Making forty tamales is a group activity in Mexico for a reason.

Lent and Holy Week: the meat-free weeks

Cuaresma restructures the Mexican table for six weeks, and the cooking that comes out of it is some of the most interesting in the country precisely because of the restriction. Dried prawn fritters in a thin red sauce with nopales. Romeritos in mole, a seepweed that appears both here and at Christmas. Lentil and bean stews. Fish, especially on the coasts, and in Holy Week itself the capirotada, a bread pudding of stale bread, piloncillo syrup, cheese, dried fruit and nuts that is read symbolically, every ingredient standing for part of the Passion.

British availability is good for this one: stale bread, dried fruit, cheese and panela-type sugar are all easy. Romeritos are the exception and essentially need an importer.

May: the two dates, only one of which Mexico cares about

5 May commemorates the Mexican victory over the French army at Puebla in 1862. In Puebla it is a real civic holiday with a parade and a plate of mole poblano. In the rest of Mexico it is a minor date that most people do not mark at all, and the enormous drinking festival held under its name elsewhere is a foreign invention. We have the full history if you want the detail.

10 May, Mothers' Day, is the opposite: fixed to the date rather than a Sunday, enormously important, and the busiest restaurant day of the Mexican year. The food is whatever the mother in question asks for, which in practice means mole, barbacoa or a seafood comida.

July and August: the regional peak, and the walnut window

Mexican summer is feria season, and the single most food-focused event is the Guelaguetza in Oaxaca in the second half of July: tlayudas, the seven moles, chapulines, mezcal, and regional dishes brought in from across the state.

August matters for one reason. Chiles en nogada depend on fresh walnuts, pomegranate and the poblano harvest arriving together, and the season runs from roughly August to late September. This is why the dish is attached to Independence rather than available year-round, and why a restaurant serving it in March is using preserved ingredients. In Britain, fresh wet walnuts appear briefly in autumn at good greengrocers and farm shops, and pomegranates are widely stocked from September. The window here is narrow and later than Mexico's.

September: Independence, and the patriotic plate

The Grito is on the night of 15 September and the holiday is the 16th. The food is explicitly nationalistic: chiles en nogada for the green, white and red of the flag; pozole by the vat; pambazos, bread dipped in guajillo sauce and fried; tostadas, sopes and flautas for a crowd; tequila and mezcal. If you host one Mexican dinner a year in Britain, this is the date with the best ratio of significance to difficulty, because pozole scales and improves on the second day.

November: the two days, and the food for the dead

1 and 2 November are the Day of the Dead: the first for children who have died, the second for adults. The altar carries pan de muerto, marigolds, water, salt, sugar skulls, and crucially the favourite food and drink of the person being remembered, which is why mole, tamales and a particular brand of beer or a specific sweet appear on altars across the country. It is not a sombre occasion and it is not Halloween; our article on celebrating it in the UK goes into the practicalities, including where to find marigolds in a British November.

December: the longest stretch of eating in the year

12 December, the feast of the Virgin of Guadalupe, brings tamales, atole and buñuelos, eaten at and around the basilica by millions of people. Then from the 16th, nine consecutive posadas, each one a house party re-enacting the search for lodging, with ponche navideño simmering on the stove: tejocotes, guavas, apples, prunes, tamarind, hibiscus, sugar cane and cinnamon, served hot, with a measure of spirit added for adults. Piñatas, buñuelos, tamales, and the next house tomorrow.

Nochebuena on the 24th is the main meal, eaten late in the evening rather than on Christmas Day: bacalao a la vizcaina, salt cod stewed with tomato, olives and capers; romeritos in mole with dried prawn cakes; the ensalada de Nochebuena of beetroot, orange, peanuts and pomegranate; and in many homes a turkey or a stuffed pork loin. Then at midnight on the 31st, twelve grapes for twelve wishes, and lentils for prosperity.

Three ingredients make or break the December cooking in Britain. Tejocotes for the ponche are available tinned or in syrup from Latin grocers and essentially nowhere else, so order in November. Salt cod is straightforward, from Spanish and Portuguese delicatessens, and needs two days of soaking with changes of water. Romeritos need an importer. The rest, including the hibiscus and tamarind, is easy to find in Britain.

Planning it from Britain

Three dates need ordering ahead: maize husks and masa for Candelaria in early February, tejocotes for December's ponche, and fresh walnuts for chiles en nogada in the autumn. Everything else on this calendar can be assembled from a large supermarket plus one Latin American or Caribbean grocer. Our store directory lists the ones we have mapped, including those that post UK-wide, which for most of this list is the difference between cooking the dish and reading about it.