My family has quite a long list of Christmas traditions, from my mom crying every time the choir sings “O Holy Night” at the Christmas Eve service, to my brother being the first one up on Christmas morning, to my dad passing out the presents. But there’s one tradition in particular that I started thinking more about recently. And that’s tamales on Christmas Eve.
Quick background on tamales. If you haven’t had a tamale, well, you are missing out, my friend. Styles vary, but the kind that is popular in my hometown are meat and cheese mixed with a corn dough and wrapped and steamed in a corn husk. Simple and completely delicious. In some places they’re wrapped in banana leaves, but I’m partial to the more savory style. They originated in Latin America way way way back when.
Now, it must be said that my family is not Latino and does not have any Latino roots that would result in a tradition like tamales on Christmas Eve. The ancestry we have been able to trace goes back to early America and then back to England.
But what makes these tamales interesting to me isn’t just that we American/English types eat them on Christmas Eve. I mean, they’re delicious, so why not. But after asking around, I started realizing that we’re not the only white family with this exact same tradition.
Colusa
In order to explain why I would find tamales on Christmas Eve significant, I probably should tell you a bit about my hometown. Colusa was founded in the 1850s, and for a long time was a significant port as it was the farthest place north that riverboats could navigate the Sacramento River, meaning all of the produce and grain grown in the region flowed through Colusa to the barges on to destinations elsewhere. From the 1850s onward the population has roughly hovered around 4,000-5,000 people. It remains a major rice growing region, as the hard clay soil common in the area lends itself perfectly to rice.
Local lore has it that the town was founded by Southerners, and that the town voted to secede from the Union during the Civil War. Whether or not that is true or apocryphal, it has always been a place where race and labor relations have experienced flashpoints.
There were major labor battles in the area, including the Wheatland Hop Riot, which resulted in four deaths, and happened just thirty miles away in 1913. And during the 20th Century, Colusa gradually saw a broad demographic shift take place, as the makeup of the migrant farmworker population gradually morphed from refugees from the Midwest Dust Bowl to immigrants from Latin America, and especially Mexico. Over the course of the 20th Century, the town went from a mostly white place with some Chinese-American families to now roughly 55%/45% white/Latino.
Growing up
I should say that I had the incredible fortune of coming from a very open-minded and decidedly non-racist household. My parents both grew up in Colusa, but did not share what are, unfortunately, relatively common negative attitudes toward immigrants.
As I spent time with friends and other families growing up, epithets, stereotypes, and hostility toward Mexican-Americans were commonplace. These stereotypes were exacerbated by economic differences. It’s a town where the farmers were almost uniformly white, and the farmworkers almost uniformly from Mexico.
Those attitudes really permeated the atmosphere at school and in the town. When I was in 3rd Grade, at recess one day we kids divided ourselves into a Mexicans vs. Americans soccer match–it wasn’t necessarily a hostile division, and at that age I think probably more of a quick way at arriving at roughly even sides rather than something we took overly seriously, but still a sign that even at that age we recognized the divisions. (Fortunately the principal quickly put an end to it and explained that wasn’t a divide we should fixate on.)
And during my freshman year of high school, the town was roiled by Prop 187, a controversial voter initiative that would have denied all public services to illegal immigrants, including school and health care. The atmosphere was really charged in my hometown, and the Latino students in my high school staged a walkout in conjunction with a broader town protest. I didn’t support the proposition by any means, but race relations being as they were, it honestly didn’t really occur to me at the time that I could have attended the protest.
The initiative ended up passing in my county with 77% of the vote, compared to 59% in the state as a whole, though it was eventually ruled unconstitutional.
Tamales
So believe me when I say, this isn’t necessarily a town where you’d expect to find a white family eating tamales on Christmas Eve.
And yet my family is not alone in this tradition. The more I’ve asked around, the more I’ve heard of families sharing the same tradition, not just in Colusa but in other towns in border states. I don’t know that anyone can necessarily put a date to when they started it, but it’s an amazing sign of how the people around you can affect your lives and traditions in ways you may not initially expect.
There’s something really American to me about all of this. As rough and as haphazard as the melting pot sometimes seems with the hostilities that creep up between cultures and races, we simultaneously grow together in imperceptible and meaningful ways just by living in the same space. We share our best traditions, and one day we wake up and find ourselves closer than we were before. And in my hometown, eating tamales is a way of giving back as well, as the ones we eat are made as part of a Christmas fundraiser to support community projects.
Sure, eating tamales on Christmas Eve doesn’t solve the lasting issues in my hometown and doesn’t mean everything is perfect. But for one night, people let a new culture into their cherished traditions on one of our most important holidays. Christmas is a time of tradition and family and continuity between generations and years, but also about letting new people into your heart.
Do you have any unique and cherished traditions, and have you thought about what they mean?
My family, Irish Catholics who weren't supposed to eat mat on Christmas Eve, bent the rules every year to eat tamales. My father and an uncle or two would go into Redding (from French Gulch) and buy them from Twomey's Irish Bar on Market St. They were homemade by a Mexican woman. You had to get there early to make sure they didn't run out. My father and uncles usually arrived back in French Gulch with a bit of Irish whiskey under their belts, but in time to celebrate the great tamale feast. I have no idea where the tradition began, but this was before World War II and I'm sure had gone on long before I remember.
Fascinating, Nathan! I'm still digesting. Your post, that is, not a tamale. Now, where would I get tamales in Ireland? To eat on Christmas Eve in honor of cultural diversity, being as I am an immigrant, to Ireland from the USA.
Paullina Petrova, thank you for reminding me not to take freedom and democracy for granted.
What would have really made this post a hit is the recipe for those tamales. How 'bout it, Nathan. Care to share your mother's tamale recipe?
There are no tamales on Christmas Eve at my house. I love tamales though and am considering starting a new tradition. In my family we wait until Christmas Eve to put up the Christmas tree and decorations. Then they stay up until New Years Day when we promptly take them down. I think the tradition started because it was cheaper to buy a real tree on Christmas Eve.
The Christmas season has been different each year, due to either my musical involvement this time of the year, or travels, we haven't had time to develop any traditions. We do, however, have food traditions for two other holiday, neither of which is unique, I'm sure.
For Thanksgiving, we eat duck. Just don't care for Turkey; even the farm-raised, organic, 8-lb birds are no match for a succulent roast duck.
For Easter, we eat lamb and Mediterranean side dishes. Jesus eating ham was not an imagery that is conjured up. 😉 Seriously, it's because my husband loves lamb and we both love Mediterranean food and it's a great excuse.
Growing up Chinese in Malaysia, now that was a childhood filled with all sorts of traditions.
Nice post (and story) Nathan. Hey, maybe you should become a writer!
I love Tamales, though I'm particularly partial to the flavor of pork tamales Peruvian style.
But I can't say I've ever had them for Christmas, either.
My family's traditions were ham, and no big deal the night before Christmas, putting up the tree we probably got that night, my dad and I sitting with one leg in, one leg out on the floor testing all the series string lights (way back) to find the one out that was causing a short; stringing the tree up because it always fell over at least once, bubble lights, the one bird with an elf on it that bounced on a spring representing my grandmother's pet parakeet, and then my brother and sister and I getting up early, rushing downstairs and eating candy and playing ONLY with presents Santa gave us until my parents staggered down stairs, my father ground the coffee beans in the hand grinder, and my mother made "scribbled" eggs with cream cheese and green onions.
My family is all gone now, and I've adopted or adapted to my wife's family traditions, which include getting the tree the first week of December, and making lasagna for Christmas eve (her mother was Italian) and Lefse with cinamon and butter (her father was Norwegian). One year, not with family, she made manicotti for friends.
My 8-year-old son knows no other Christmas than being with his mother's family, which now has dwindled down to his aunt and his cousin; but he loves the way his aunt decorates her house and looks forward to visiting her every Christmas, and to playing with ONLY the toys Santa brought Christmas morning until everyone's around the tree to distribute presents.
My favorite Christmas was in Darjeeling Hill District, where my brother and sister and I suspected we'd be passed by when Santa flew around, only to discover the next morning in our parents' main sitting room of their bungalow (we had our own for us three kids) a plethora of gifts such as flannel pajamas and rabbit-fur-lined mittens and hats and slippers, all of which were appreciated considering we were celebrating within site of Mount Kanchenjunga and a short drive up Tiger Hill from a view of Everest…
Oh tamales! YUM!
I think your point in this post is lovely – that even when there are tensions, neighboring cultures can't help but share with one another. Especially wonderful things. Like Tamales!! 🙂
My family tradition was to celebrate both Channuka and Christmas. Although both of my parents were Jewish, for some reason we did the whole Santa Claus Christmas thing – for which I am very grateful. It's a wonderful holiday – the lights, the songs, the food, the presents – and one of my fondest childhood memories was staying up until all hours one Christmas Eve, trying to catch a glimpse of Santa and his raindeers landing on the roof. Oh so exciting!
I guess that's an example where I benefited from sharing a neighboring cultural tradition. 🙂
Thanks for this post, Nathan.
Our Christmas Eve tradition was always to make Italian food (usually handmade cavatellis) and now that I'm an adult, I've both elevated and retro'd that back to a full-on Feast of the Seven Fishes which my grandmother and older relatives used to have. This is an Italian tradition where, you guessed it, we have (at least!) seven different fish (and seafood) varieties prepared different ways for each course. It's quite a feat…a veritable culinary accomplishment. A LOT of work but SO worthwhile.
I love Christmas Eve traditions – especially culturally significant ones 🙂
Christmas. It was a Chistmas kids' party where Christmas and most of my life was ruined. So my Christmas tradition since then has been to avoid it as much as possible.
Call me a scrouge if you will. That day opened my eyes to the indifferent hearts of humanity. Completely contrary to the true meaning of Christmas, which I did learn because of that day and other lessons a five-year-old shouldn't have to learn. Lessons I'm still coming to terms with half a lifespan later. I've long since forgiven, but the damage was done. I'm better this year than ever at coping with this incurable bah-humbug sickness.
Merry Christmas. May all your wishes come true. My wishes are for the world to be a little more compasionate and may all you and yours prosper and enjoy good health.
We live in a state with a high Hispanic population and my husband would love to adopt your tradition, as one of his co-workers makes amazing, authentic tamales. I think this post is beautiful and highlights the potential we have as humans. Happy Holidays!
Any chance of you posting your recipe?
My in-laws tend to gravitate towards enchiladas on Christmas Eve. (We spend Christmas Eve with them each year). At first the menu change was in rebellion to a do-over of Thanksgiving dinner and wanting to break out of the mold of what was expected. And we liked it, so we kept doing it. I suppose that's how all traditions start out.
Loved your family and town history! Thanx for sharing!
Christmas Eve fondue. If there's a big enough crowd then it's cheese then meat followed by chocolate. If it's just two of us then cheese wins out while my parents, on the other side of the country have the works with their friends and neighbours. In the morning we put the Christmas Breakfast in the oven (an egg soaked bread casserole-ish creation prepared the day before) and everyone gets to enjoy the morning without having to interrupt it with cooking.
A great post, Nathan. I like your evocation of the cultural background.I've never tasted Tamales – now I want to.
My grandfather's personal tradition was for him to greet his family as they returned from Midnight Mass (his wife and kids were devout Roman Catholics; he was an atheist) with one glass of sherry apiece to wish them Merry Christmas.
The sherry was in a large bottle which was only opened that once a year. The rest of the time it sat in a cupboard. It was the only alcohol in the house, lasted for ages, and as the years passed the rim of the bottle became encrusted with sticky dust.
His parents were alcoholics and he had painful memories of being dragged from his bed in the middle of the night as a small boy to play the flute for a houseful of drunken adults to his little sister's piano accompaniment. They both became professional musicians, and none of the 11 siblings ever drank.
When I was a child we went to Midnight Mass at the Benedictine Abbey which was also our parish church. My mother insisted on arriving earlier than everyone else. This meant we usually got there at about 10, before the previous service, a mass in Polish for the large Polish-speaking community in our area, let out. My mother invariably commented on the smell of garlic.
When they flocked out (and the huge church would be packed) we'd dash in to try and get seats in the front row. There would be a long, long wait until a carol service at 11 conducted by the choir master. In later years this was sung by a community choir including persons of a female persuasion, so they were arrayed in front of the sanctuary rails rather than inside it – a place no woman could be, unless she was a bride, in her coffin, or vacuuming the carpet.
Just before midnight, the choir would depart, the lights go out, and we would wait for the midnight bell, rung in darkness.
When the twelfth note died away, we'd hear a single voice raised in plainsong from the very back of the church, and the whole monastic community would file in with their dark robes on and their hoods up, chanting in Latin and holding candles. Then the choir, the altar servers carrying incense, and finally the celebrants in their robes. This coup de theatre was followed by a sung mass.
The first line of the first reading from Isaiah always sends a shiver down my spine "The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light."
Then everyone would wish everyone else Merry Christmas and we'd walk home at about 1.30 in the morning, often hearing birds singing by the light of the street lamps.
I'm not a believer any more, but I have to admire the sense of theatre. I sometimes go to "Midnight Mass" – so called – at my local Anglican Cathedral and always feel slightly cheated that it isn't really at midnight.
A great post, Nathan. I like your evocation of the cultural background.I've never tasted Tamales – now I want to.
My grandfather's personal tradition was for him to greet his family as they returned from Midnight Mass (his wife and kids were devout Roman Catholics; he was an atheist) with one glass of sherry apiece to wish them Merry Christmas.
The sherry was in a large bottle which was only opened that once a year. The rest of the time it sat in a cupboard. It was the only alcohol in the house, lasted for ages, and as the years passed the rim of the bottle became encrusted with sticky dust.
His parents were alcoholics and he had painful memories of being dragged from his bed in the middle of the night as a small boy to play the flute for a houseful of drunken adults to his little sister's piano accompaniment. They both became professional musicians, and none of the 11 siblings ever drank.
"Not only white families," laugh out loud.
Cool tradition, fun reading.
Thanks Bransford!
We lived in a small town in Texas for a few years. A family there taught us how to make tamles, and our church holiday potluck always featured tamales. This past summer we vacationed out west and I picked up all of the ingredients to make tamales (except meat, cheese,etc.) I'm thinking tamales for Christmas Eve.
I live in the Pacific NW right on the coast where seafood is king. My mother always served Dungeness crab, usually in a salad on Christmas eve. In my childhood we had a roast on Christmas, but I don't eat most meat so make vegetarian tamales for Christmas dinner. My husband likes cranberry bread with orange peel and I make a bread pudding and smoked salmon fritatta for breakfast on Christmas day. And then after the gifts I begin making tamales.
Wow, Nathan, a great piece of writing. Honest, forthright – and delicious.
Would fit wonderfully in a book entitled, "Traditions That Take All Day To Make."
Fruitcake, certain soups, etc.
I just found out kolache, a Slovak-Polish pastry – is very popular in Texas! Who knew!
There is a wonderful little children's book; Too Many Tamales by Gary Soto, beutifully illustrated by Ed Martinez. My kids loved it. When we moved to California 9 years ago I noticed homemade tamales would pop up everywhere in Dec. My kids had a beautiful association of Tamales and Christmas from that book and so we decided to learn how to make them. We do it every year now. What fun.
I loved reading all the comments on your Tamale blog. Bless your heart for sharing your story – if only everyone was raised by parents like yours we'd have world peace. I wrote because my Caucasian family always has sushi and miso soup Christmas eve and your story go me to thinking and touched me – thank you.
Oh, yes. I'm forever trying to tame my sentimentalist streak, but I'm a sucker for traditions and their reasons.
This is a cool story.
We have Christmas tree traditions:
1. While the tree is letting out cold air, the Christmas Tree fairies are waking up, who will fly out of the tree as it warms and opens up and reside in our house for the holidays. It is a story we tell each year (that I made up).
2.We have a Christmas tape that came with a songbook that we used to dance to and one year when our daughter was little, we made a tape of this tape with us (mostly our daughter) singing along and the dog barking and with her m-c-ing. She was very entertaining. She sang the male deep opera voices as well as the high female voices. At the end she wishes everyone a Merry Christmas in a Santa impersonation. We replay it while we decorate the tree each year.
3. My husband writes witty riddles on all his tags.
4. We send something magical to a brain injured young man every year.
5. There often is a last hidden surprise gift.
6. We sing carols on Christmas Eve and I pretend to sing a certain tune in my own tune and with an Irish lilt.
We make things, tree decorations,dough-art, holiday decorations, etc. Last year we made stars that hang overhead in the living room and like them so much, we've kept the stars up all year.
When we get out old things, the handmade ones are especially fun to see again. We have, for example two pine cones and a snowman 3-D landscape on a piece of painted cardboard that our daughter made in 2nd grade. It's a little deflated now, but it just wouldn't be Christmas without it!
I've never had a tamale, but my neighbors (who are Latino…well, the dad is, plus the sons) are, and they're having a tamale party New Year's Eve.
We eat Mexican and Tex Mex all the time at my house. American food is this side of a special treat during the holidays.
I love tamales. We have a little place near our house that make them. unfortunately, they're very popular and hard to get. So we eat lime tacos instead.
😀
I don't have any cherished traditions, so be it, but this post sent a ringing like a spider web, imagine that, through my mind and landed reverberating kindly on the great story Like Water for Chocolate. I think you have an adult story here. Like Tamales for Gifts by Nathan Bransford, that's the way I see it. Really, what do we get together to do? Eat. It's the one transcendent reason to get together. It's the one thing everyone can agree on. It sounds like you have all the research done. I would read that. I'm sorry if this sounds too optimistic, I get hijacked by the spirit about this time of year. It probably has no scientifically provable purpose, but it sure feels good. Hey! Tamales!
We used to have Latino neighbors who brought us tamales for Christmas Eve. It's an awesome tradition, and I am very thankful that I grew up in a place where Latino culture is a huge, if not predominant part.
I should also say—I'm posting from China and my access to blogs has been spotty at best, thanks to the Great Firewall, so I rushed my first comment—this is a really great post.
My favourite tradition is going home on Christmas Eve and putting up the Christmas Tree very late with my siblings. My brother and I usually pretend to be obnoxious lumberjacks playing games of one-up-man-ship on each other while we and make up ridiculous tales about how hard life was felling trees in the past. By the time we're ready to do the outside lights it's nearly time for Midnight Mass. This lunacy is why I'm a writer!
when i was a kid, my mom always gave us donuts for breakfast. every other person i've ever talked to has some big special breakfast (things like cinnamon buns or pancakes/waffles/french toast/etc.), but we never did. i never thought anything of it till i heard other kids at school talking about their big christmas brunches. when i asked my mom why we had donuts, she said it was b/c she didn't feel like cooking, but felt like we should have something other than cold cereal. after all, she'd be the one cooking, and she deserved a holiday too.
my husband and i have had mormon missionaries over for christmas eve dinner for the last 4 years (we've been married for 5 years, and that first christmas he was in basic training) and given them care packages w/ things like shampoo, toothpaste, candy bars, hand sanitizer, chapstick, etc. we aren't doing it this year, which makes me sad, but our financial situation makes it difficult to feel anyone outside our family, as does giving away things like that. i'm hoping to be able to do it again next year though.
All the women in my boyfriend's family get together and make a HUGE batch of tamales on the weekend before Christmas. Then they distribute them to all their family members, and everyone eats them during the week leading up to Christmas. They're Mexican, so it makes sense. This is a relatively new tradition for me since I'm a relatively new addition to the family.
My family used to throw a dinner party two days before Christmas for friends of the family and co-workers. The women would experiment with hors d'oeuvres and cocktails and things equally stuffy. This stuff wasn't made with love, it was made with the intention to impress people!
i attended a tamale making party this year – what a tremendous amount of work/fun involved!!! i have always loved to eat tamales, so it was great to learn all that was involved! including cooking the meat and soaking the corn husks and making the sauce, definitely a two day process! it was at this party i learned of the Christmas eve tradition of having tamales for dinner, so i may have to include this as one of my family's traditions…mmm good!!! feliz navidad, all! 🙂
My parents would always joke around with us saying the only reason they'd make tamales every Christmas was so that everyone would have something to unwrap 🙂
Thank you for the great read