The holiday season is a great time to attract customers with menus and promotions based on Mexican traditions. Here are just a few ideas:

• Las Posadas (The Inns). For nine days before Christmas, Hispanic families re-enact the Holy Family's search for shelter with candlelight processions, feasts and fiestas. Restaurants could offer a special "Las Posadas" menu from Dec. 16 to 24, featuring some traditional Mexican holiday foods (buñuelos, tamales, ponche, for example). You could also set farolitos (little lanterns) at the entrance to your restaurant, or even use them as tabletop decorations.

• The Poinsettia. This popular Christmas flower is native to Mexico. One legend has it that a girl walking to church was sad because she had no gift to present Jesus on Christmas Eve. She made a bouquet from weeds growing along the road, and when she laid it at the Nativity scene, the weeds became bright red flowers. In addition to decorating with poinsettias, you could offer poinsettia-shaped bizcochuelos (cookies) on your dessert menu, or present a small plate of them with the check at the end of a customer's meal. You could also have young customers color pictures of poinsettias (possibly on a place mat or page that explains the legend of the poinsettia). Find a picture of a poinsettia kids can color at christmas-santa.tripod.com.

• Noche de los Rabanos (Night of the Radishes). This Dec. 23 event is one of Oaxaca's most popular fiestas. Participants carve radishes into elaborate figures, then create scenes (the Nativity, for example) with the radish "people." The celebration commemorates the introduction of the radish by Spanish colonists in the mid-19th century, according to a story at festivals.com. Though Oaxacan radishes typically are the size of yams, you could create a display (possibly as a tabletop decoration) using the smaller white and red radishes found in the U.S., and give customers a brief history of the event. You could also feature radishes in a special salad.