My family’s traditional food celebration

Every Christmas we do our own traditions in the family. This is one of the seasons we Kapampangans truly love. We have our monitos and monitas every kris-kringle, Christmas caroling with friends, outreach programs, and more. The best part for a food-lover like me is the eating part, the Noche Buena.

My family’s Christmas food celebration has three parts: the dinner before Christmas Eve; the Noche Buena itself; and the Christmas reunion.

The dinner before Christmas Eve

This is the dinner on the 24^th of December. Usually we only prepare special dishes for dinner at this time. The most usual are pasta like fettuccini ala carbonara, penne with asparagus and bacon cubes or Korean noodles, steak, mashed potato with gravy, buttered vegetables, and the like. Of course we don’t serve them altogether but all of them are prepared by my very talented mother. For dessert, we have our chocolates sent by our relatives abroad, and we have our fruits, usually oranges, apples, and grapes, at the table but we don’t eat them just yet, we save them for the Noche Buena. Every Christmas season, we usually make our own “leche flan” or “halaya ube” for dessert after every meal. Sometimes those serve as early Christmas gifts for relatives and friends. We siblings usually fight over the labor of who would be privileged to grate the crops or beat the eggs and stir the mixture.

The Noche Buena

This is what we serve during the Christmas Eve. More often than not, kids at heart like us stay up late and wait for 12 midnight to open our gifts under the Christmas tree that we are so always eager to decorate. Before the clock strikes twelve my mother and auntie has already prepared our Noche Buena. It’s the tradition that matters most that’s why we prepare food at 12. We serve less than what we had at dinner because we are not that hungry at this time of the night and my mother don’t approve of having a full stomach before we sleep. Most of the time, we eat the all-time-favorite ham. Afterwards, we nibble on fruits, more chocolates and dessert.

The Christmas reunion

December 25^th, its Christmas time! On this day, we always go to our relatives on my father’s side of family for our Christmas celebration. After staying up late, we get up early for our early trip to Guagua. We usually arrive there at lunch time. Every year, we have different themes for the feast. We have the “fiestang barrio” type wherein dishes like grilled fish, “buru” with lettuce, pork sinigang, nilaga, chicharon, bulalo, kaldereta, sisig, steamed prawns and crabs, and more are served. We also have the modern Filipino style wherein we serve green salad, fried chicken, pasta, lechon kawali, beef with broccoli, seafood supreme, and we have fondeau for dessert. We also have the regular type that is mostly often used. Dishes like prawns and crabs are always present, fried chicken for the children, pasta and/or mashed potato, leche flan and buko salad for dessert, the town’s specialty, chicharon and some more variations. We stay here until the late afternoon so we could have an early dinner before we go home.

What I value most during Christmas is not the receiving of gifts, but the labors of love we enjoy doing as a family, especially the preparation of “halaya ube.” Imagine how hard it is to stir the heavy mixture. Christmas is a once a year celebration, that’s why my family makes the most out of it.

How do you celebrate yours?

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