Tag Archives: Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve Dinner (Danish-American)

Nationality: Danish-American
Age: 20
Occupation: College Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 4/19/13
Primary Language: English

The informant describes how his Danish family celebrates Christmas each year in San Francisco.  The informant details the Christmas Eve dinner and a game involving rice pudding and an almond at the end of the meal.  The informant explains that he learned this tradition from his Danish family and has partaken in the tradition every since he was a little kid.  The tradition of the dinner has sentimental value for him because he has done it for so long with his family.

The informant explains that his Danish-American family celebrates Christmas Eve in a distinct fashion.  The family always has a roasted duck for dinner and after eating the duck the family always eats a bowl of rice pudding, but plays a game along with the eating of the pudding.  The family places an almond into a large bowl of pudding and the goal of the game is to pass the bowl of pudding around with each participant taking one scoop of pudding until someone finds the almond.  The participant who finds the almond typically wins a prize.  Traditionally the prize was marzipan, but the informant explains they do not eat that anymore because it does not taste good.  The trick of the game is to do your best to keep it a secret if you have found the almond because you want to make your other family members continue to eat the pudding without them knowing the game is actually over.  The informant explains that he actually added a variation to the game by putting in two almonds into the pudding without letting the others know.

I find the Danish celebration interesting as it varies largely from the celebration in the United States.  There are apparent Danish adaptations to the celebration of Christmas as seen with the roasted duck meal and the rice pudding game with the almond.  I have never heard of either of these practices in traditional U.S. Christmas celebrations.  The games give possible deeper insight into the traditional food eaten within the Danish past and how they play games.

“Tamales on Christmas Eve”

Nationality: American
Age: 7
Occupation: None
Residence: Redondo Beach, CA
Performance Date: April 2013
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

            At a tender seven years of age, the informant shared a family tradition of eating tamales on Christmas Eve, which, according to her account, is a shared tradition among most Mexican families. Her mother’s side of the family is Mexican and has practiced the tradition through generations. Indeed, the informant described an annual large family gathering with such an excess of tamales that it feels like “forever” until the leftovers are finished.

            For the informant, it seems the tamales on Christmas Eve is a fun way to spend her vacation―she talks about how delicious the food is, her presents the next day, and the fact that school is on recess.

 

            Every night, uh, I mean before every Christmas night, we go to Nana’s. Actually, we used to go to Nana’s, but then she passed away. But we would go, and lots of people were there and we would make yummy tamales during the night and take them home!

            I don’t make the tamales, I just eat them. I’m not old enough; they don’t let me touch the things in the kitchen yet. Usually it’s just the girls, but sometimes my dad helps, too, and the other people. I don’t know all of them, just some, but there are lots. I didn’t know my family was so big.

            My mama said she did it with Nana when she was a girl, too, and that lots of Mexican families do it. I just know that we make so many tamales, like, so many tamales. Well, there’s rice and beans, too, but even when we bring them home we just keep eating the tamales the next day, and the next day, and the next day. . .it feels like forever. It’s still my favorite dinner though! We eat the tamales, and then the next day we get presents. Plus, there’s no school.

 

            Although some of the finer details may be absent from the informant’s narrative, in sifting through her account we can find some more thematic values embedded in the tradition. Family is clearly an important element in the Mexican Christmas Eve tradition. For one, the women gather together in the kitchen, presumably to “catch up” and bond through the cooking process. The informant mentions how so many family members gather together that she doesn’t even recognize them all. In that vein, her Nana’s recent passing seems to have made a significant impact on her family’s practice of the tradition. The informant did not provide information about where her family would make tamales in the future, but it is quite evident that the familiar setting of her grandmother’s home, a symbol of the stable matriarchy, is no longer accessible to her, further showing how integral family is to this tradition.

            Additionally, the theme of bountiful celebration is quite clear. The family makes so many tamales that guests must take them home, and even then the informant herself must eat tamales for days after Christmas Eve. While the rest of the year she and her family may practice moderation, tamales on Christmas Eve is clearly a happy abandonment of that principle.

Catalan Christmas

Nationality: Spanish
Age: 35
Occupation: Spanish Professor
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 2013
Primary Language: Spanish

“I wanted to tell you about Catalan traditions, which are very different from the rest of Spain and not that well known. When I say Catalan traditions I mean those that originated in Cataluña, in the North of Spain. Um, I mean there are several that I can share because I grew up with them. One of them is, well, I grew up and I didn’t grow up, my family moved to Germany to work, but they made a point of telling us things from Cataluna when we were in Spain. So I was living them, but outside of Cataluna, I was living them in Germany. The first of them, which was very unique and weird to a certain extent, happens in the night of the 24th, so you have to think in the context of Santa. So kids, um, bring home, um, strange creatures made of wood, with four wooden legs, and then it has, you know, decorated with a red barentina, which is a red baret, and you bring that piece of wood in, and you generally put it next to a fire or next to a Christmas tree these days, and you cover it with a blanket so it’s comfortable and warm, and you feed it every morning. So the kids usually put some fruits or vegetables or candies, and they magically disappear during the day, so you’re kind of feeding that little creature. And then the night of the 24th, everyone gets together around it, and you know parents have to make sure that something is put underneath the blanket so it looks like it’s getting fatter and stronger as its eating. And the weird weird tradition is that you get a stick and the kids hit the little creature with the stick and you sing a little song in Catalan, and literally the pig “shits” the presents. So traditionally, it was more candies and little books, this day is a lot of parents are using it as Santa so kids are getting bigger and bigger presents and, then it depends on families, some families do it all at once, so the kids go to the kitchen and wet the stick and then they go back and they hit the piggy and all the presents come out at once, some families do it kid by kid, so as the kid gets the stick wet the parents make sure that underneath the blanket comes the present that is assigned for that kid, but it’s a very strange tradition in how it is delivered.”

Informant Analysis: “One thing that’s interesting about it too is that I grew up with it in my family because my dad is from Cataluna, my mom is not, but we did it in my dad’s side of the family, and I thought it was the normal thing in Spain, so when I was ten and I returned to Spain, I moved to Northern Spain and I talked about this and people looked at me as if I was crazy, you know, because they don’t do it over there and during Franco’s time during the dictatorship it was forbidden, so many kids of my generation grew up during Franco’s time and were not allowed to do that unless they were doing it in hiding at home, so for me something that was very normal was not necessarily for everyone.”

Analysis: I think this is a fun way to include the children in the present giving process, because they are “feeding” the small animal that they create, so they have a part in it. Usually the parents are the ones buying and giving the presents, so this way its more of a group effort. This ritual was obviously important to the informant because it helped her hold on to her Catalan heritage even when she wasn’t physically there.

Baby Jesus on Christmas Eve

Nationality: Cuban, Hungarian
Age: 49
Occupation: Homemaker
Residence: Woodland Hills, California
Performance Date: March 20, 2013
Primary Language: English
Language: Some Hungarian

Informant: “On Christmas eve children are not allowed to enter the room where the Christmas tree is going to be in, until given permission by their parents. Children are told that Baby Jesus brought the tree and the gifts for them. Though, sometimes it is just the gifts that Baby Jesus is responsible for”

 

The informant is a first generation American who was born in Danbury, Connecticut. She is a middle aged woman with two older children. Her father was born in Oriente, Cuba and her mother was born in Mór, Hungary. The informant did not believe in this baby Jesus lore herself, but heard about this belief from her mother. Her mother told the informant and her sisters of this lore when they were young children approximately six or seven years of age.

Although the Baby Jesus tradition was not actively practiced in the informant’s family, it was actively practiced and believed in her mother’s family when her mother was a child. The informant said that her mother and her family “would go to church and when they got back Baby Jesus would have magically decorated the room and brought gifts.”

The informant and her sisters found the lore to be amusing, and they would sometimes say to things to each other such as “Baby Jesus wouldn’t like that” to jest about the idea of Baby Jesus. She also liked the idea of Baby Jesus because it was different from her cultural experience and “sparked the imagination.” Furthermore, the informant felt that the idea of Baby Jesus really cemented the concept of Christianity during Christmas because belief in Baby Jesus took the focus away from figures like Santa Claus and reemphasized the “real point of the holiday of Jesus’s birth.”

I agree with the informant that this lore effectively brings Christ back into the focus of Christmas because now Baby Jesus is responsible for the Christmas tree and the gifts rather than a character like Santa Claus. As an Episcopalian, I am not a very devoutly religious Christian, but my family and I do go to church on Christmas Eve. Oftentimes, the pastor will spend some time to discuss how people (in reference to other Christians) can forget the reason behind the celebration of Christmas, that it is ultimately the day of Jesus’s birth, rather than just a day of gift-giving and festivities. It seems some Christians consider overlooking the importance of Jesus on Christmas a very serious problem, and methods like this can help alleviate this perceived problem.

Swedish Lutefisk Recipe

Nationality: Finnish, Swedish American
Age: 77
Residence: Temecula, CA
Performance Date: 4/8/12
Primary Language: English

The informant is 77 years old. She was born in Minnesota, and is of Swedish and Finnish descent.

Over Easter Brunch, my informant supplied me with some traditional Swedish folklore. The first thing that came to her mind was a recipe for Lutefisk that her family used to make. This is what she told me about the traditional Swedish recipe:

“Lutefisk is an old Swedish fish dish. It’s cod preserved in lye. I think my mother used to soak it in milk, or actually probably water. The only time she would make it was Christmas Eve. I used to help a little bit, but I think I mostly got in the way. It was actually really disgusting. No one liked it, not even my mother who spent the time making it every year! I don’t know why we kept making it for so long, but it was a traditional thing that made us feel more connected to our roots. After leaving the old country, it was nice for my parents to have a little something traditional, even if no one really enjoyed it!”

I agree with my informant’s reasoning about why the tradition continued. If no one actually enjoyed eating the lutefisk, then it was most likely made as a way to stay in touch with the family’s Swedish heritage after moving to America.

Recipe:

1 piece dried lutefisk, sawed into 6 lengths

2 tablespoons lye

Prep: Soak the fish in water for 3 days. Add two Tbsp. lye into a gallon of water. Soak for 3 days in this solution. Then soak for 4 days in water, changing water every day.

Cooking: Tie the fish loosely in a square of cheese cloth. Drop in a large enamel pot of boiling water. Cook 10 minutes or until well done. Remove cheese cloth put on a platter and debone. Serve with a mustard sauce.