Valerie and Theresa were guests on Andreu Buenafuente’s popular show on La Sexta (Spanish TV Channel 6). Watch the show here.

San Esteban/Sant Esteve My Catalan mother-in-law could never relax on Christmas Day.  Plates with remains of chicken or turkey were whipped from under our noses, earthenware dishes hauled away for scrubbing. While we were still gut-busting our way through turrón, cava, coffee and brandy, or already flaked out, bloated and snoring, in armchairs, terrifying crashes, screeches and yells issued from the kitchen. In those days my Catalan was rudimentary, but there was one word I understood: canelons!!!  The 26th of December, St Steven’s day, el dia de Sant Esteve, is a public holiday in Catalunya (and also in Balears where it known as the second Christmas) and the making of the cannelonis that are traditionally eaten that day for lunch (well, only the first course, you understand) was a very, very big deal.

Nowadays there’s a roaring trade in frozen canneloni and pre-cooked canneloni, and of course you can order them from the catering, and even from some enterprising bakeries, where you pick them up freshly made and piping hot on the day. Teresina and Lluis, my parents-in-law, made them by hand, from scratch. They painstakingly prepared the finely minced filling from the remains of the Christmas bird and the meat from the traditional broth and stew, they boiled and drained the individual canneloni squares one by one (pre-cooked? What’s that?), rolled them up and stuck them together, made gallons of real bechamel sauce, all punctuated by slanging matches and threats of divorce. They were the best canelons I have ever tasted.  Ever.

Roscón de Reyes “Mm, look what I’ve bought,” says Francisco every January 5, thrusting under my nose a giant ring-shaped bun with a few bits of red and green candied peel stuck on top and a plastic toy hidden somewhere inside for me to break a tooth on.  I fail to show much enthusiasm  . ”But this one’s got loads of cream in it,” heraves. Ultra-sweet, spray-on cream.  It’s an improvement, I suppose, but give me Christmas cake any day (“O yuck,” protest my Spanish friends, so empalagoso. Sickly? Well, I suppose it is).  We don’t really need to buy one, a roscón de reyes, that is.  At the local village church on January 5th, after they’ve given out presents to all the kids and we’ve all taken part in a nearly-every-ticket-a-winner raffle, the roscones de reyes are cut up and given out and fought over. There’s always plenty for everyone. Or there has been up to now. Can the nata survive the crisis?

In Catalunya, Valerie tells me, the traditional tortell de reis comes with a cardboard crown and contains a broad bean – una fava. The lucky (toothless) person who finds it is proclaimed Bean King and gets to wear the crown. And also has the royal duty of reimbursing whoever shelled out on the cake.  Nowadays, the tortell also contains a bean-sized ceramic king, the finder of which is, logically, crowned King, while the fava-finder has to pay. Apparently, once upon a time ‘Twelfth Night’ cakes’ were popular in England, too. Only they were rich and dark and thickly iced and contained a lucky pea as well as a bean.

Villancico The Spanish word for Christmas carol has its origin in the old Castilian word villano, meaning ‘villager’ – as opposed to noble or squire. During the 15th and 16th centuries the villancico was a jolly sort of song-and-dance knees up for country folk, and it was only in the following centuries that the songs took on a religious and / or Christmassy tone. As anyone who has spent a few seasons in Spain will know, there’s nothing like a deafening, tambourine-banging, hand-clapping, foot-stomping, bottle and spoon-clinking chorus-filled villancico to drive you nuts as you battle with the Christmas shopping.    

My favourite has always been  Los Peces en el Río – probably because it’s the only one I can ever remember the words to. Well, the chorus at least. Now, if you want to impress your Spanish friends you can crib up on the frolicking fish and their seasonal alegría by clicking on the link. Note the seseo on the pronunciation of ‘peces’ – peses as opposed to pethes. Fishes in the River

OK, so you know what a belén is, but it took me years to realise that Belén is how the Spanish say Bethlehem, as in ‘O Little Town of’. I had always assumed that it just meant ‘Christmas crib’ or ‘Nativity Scene’ – which, of course, it does. Neither translation, however, does justice to the fabulous folk art of recreating the entire village of Bethlehem and its environs out of bits of twig and sand and silver foil and stones and seeds and bark and legions of tacky plastic nativity figures from the Chinese shop (100-peseta shops of old).

I was invited to my brother-in-law’s belén-building morning a couple of weeks ago and I swear the adults had even more fun than the kids, although the plentiful supply of freshly-slithered ham, cured Manchego and full-bodied Rioja also played its part. One inspired addition to this year’s model was a ‘field’ of crops – grown from lentils and soybeans planted and watered in cotton wool!

Originally a Neapolitan traditional, the belén was introduced to Spain in the 18^th Century by Maria Amalia de Sajona, the first wife of Carlos III.

Yes, yes, you’re all familiar with the Three Kings, the 12 lucky grapes and the big fat Gordo Lottery.  But you don’t know everything about Spanish Christmas customs, do you? Whatever, you can always refresh your memory and load up with extra bags of useless information for all those Christmas parties.  We start the countdown to Christmas with …

El Aguinaldo – or Fleecing the relatives

Better known as ‘la paga extra’, el aguinaldo is the Christmas bonus that workers traditionally receive at the end of the year (if the crisis hasn’t led to an axing …). The word itself goes back to the 14^th century and is probably derived from the Latin expression hoc in anno, meaning ‘in this year’.  More interestingly, el Aguinaldo is also a type of money-extorting wassail. In the García family, at any rate, no sooner have the Christmas dinner plates been cleared away than all of those aged five to 25 (or 35 if still unemployed / earning Dickensian wages and living at home) ambush their elders with a rousing rendition or six of el Aguinaldo. It goes like this and it gets sung to/at every ‘proper’ adult in the room:

“Dame el aguinaldo, carita de rosa
que no tienes cara de ser tan roñosa
La campana gorda de la catedral
se te caiga encima si no me lo das
y si me lo das
y si me lo das…
¡que pases las Pascuas con felicidad!”

You get the message, right? If you want a nice Christmas, sunshine, hand over the dosh – or if you prefer, get splattered to death by the ten-tonne bell of a cathedral (No wonder the Spanish have taken so well to trick or treating …).  In my experience, it’s wise to comply. Once the relatives have been fleeced, the older ‘children’ set about dividing up the spoils – supposedly equally, though I have witnessed full-scale wars erupt at this point. As a footnote, I’d be interested to hear if anyone else has experienced this ‘charming’ custom, as its practice no longer seems widespread.