I'd like to share some traditions from my mom's hometown (northern Mexico) where both saints have a role in peoples lives.
St. John the Baptist's day is important because it's around that date that the rainy season starts. Most people try to have their fields planted by that date, but not to early, so they can catch the first rains.
After St. John's day, people begin holding processions to pray for rain. The longer it takes for the rains to come, the more frequent and fervent these processions are. I remember watching one from a hill above town once, some people carrying holy images, other people shooting skyrockets into the air.
The town sits next to a river and my mom says that in the old days people would go down early in the morning to bathe in the river on St. John's the Baptists day, because they believed the water was blessed on that morning.
There was also a custom in those parts of northern Mexico of splashing people with water on St. John's day. I remember as a teenagers my cousin and I once did our part in keeping up the tradition, with hose and buckets
St. Joseph plays an important part in the Mexican Christmas tradition of
Las Posadas . In my mom's hometown we also have the tradition of a little shrine to St. Joseph which gets passed from house to house. It has a picture of St. Joseph carrying a lily and the Baby Jesus, with a poor box attached at the bottom. Every day or two it gets passed to a new house where someone, usually the lady of the house, lights a candle before it and prays to St. Joseph.
I used to sleep in the room where my grandmother would place the shrine, between a picture of St. Francis and one of the miraculous images of Christ to which she was devoted. I remember lying in bed and watching the light of the candle flicker against the wall. I saw this same custom in another town a few hours away, where an aunt lived.
) is dedicated to St. Joseph.