Classics at Christmas

In January 2006, when I started this blog, anything I wrote about things Spanish was new. With the passing years repetition crept in. Nowadays I often repeat things. I have almost no alternative. My only hope is that new readers will think the regurgitated topics are new.

I was playing with the idea of writing, yet another, Christmas piece, then I considered the number of seasonal entries I've written over the years. Thinking economy of effort and suchlike I decided to do a BBC and to trot out the old stuff again as though it were classic. I have to say that even just tagging up the entries bored me after a while. I hope they don't bore you right from the start and whatever number you plough through, before surrendering, you find something informative or amusing or, at least, readable.  

Click on the link to get to the older post. Sorry about all the repetition over the years and please remember that what was true in the past may have changed slightly over time.

Christmas begins The Christmas lottery

They think it's all over This one's about how the dates of Christmas are not the same as in the UK

Eating at Christmas A self explanatory title I think

And some lemons for the prawns This one is about differences between UK and Spanish Christmases

17 million Spaniards or 63% of the population earn less than 1,000€ gross per month and 4,422,359 are out of work. This is one of the blogs that has the largest number of hits. I suspect it's for the title which has almost nothing to do with the content. There's a bit about what a Christmassy day the 5th January is 

Bring me pine logs hither Mention of our venerable Christmas tree. in fact we replaced it for this 2023 Christmas

Seasonal snippets All sorts of Christmas things - for once the title is a good reflection of the content

Losing my grip Mainly about a Christmas lottery advert

Rather reassuring The Christmas run up story of years and years ago

Tales of turrón This one doesn't read badly after all this time - obviously enough it's about turrón

Stamping the Christmas cards Just what it says

Underwear, grapes and bubbly New Year's traditions

The goose is getting fat  Those not quite so obvious Christmas things

Drawing to a close  Christmas ends with the Three Kings in Spain

Not a dry eye in the house Christmas concerts and community

Jingle bells  I think it's a bit of a Christmas comparison in two countries

They think it's all over The things that happen in January as part of Christmas. I've even used the title before!

Pale blue dot Christmas lights

Fat chance The Christmas lottery - again

Fattening of geese Christmas cards and British supermarkets

So this is Christmas It seems to be an all embracing article

Dust and lard and no Joseph Beuys

I think Quality Street are yummy. Not that good for the waistline perhaps and a bit of a type 2 diabetes problem but, hey ho. Both they and I come from West Yorkshire. When I was a lad, I went on a school trip around the Mackintosh's factory where Quality Street were made. They gave us hundreds of free samples and I'm still grateful. Not that I have a problem with Celebrations or Heroes but, if I were forced to plump for just one, it would still be the Halifax product. I live in Spain though and here the Christmas habits don't include Quality Street. There are no mince pies either. Instead the customary sweet things are turrón, polvorones and mantecados. 

Every year these Spanish Christmas sweets cause just a little friction when Maggie and I go to do our joint Christmas food shop - I think we should and Maggie thinks we shouldn't. She has no problem with turrón, she likes the two local versions - turrón is often translated as nougat in English because, like the French inspired pink and white confection, it's made from almonds and honey. It doesn't look the same or taste the same but that's something else for another day. The two traditional Alicantino turrones are the soft one, the one that drips with almond oil, often called Turrón de Jijona and the brittle one or Turrón de Alicante. If you're in Consum or Mercadona you'll find tens of flavours of turrón, most of which seem to me to be more like chocolate bars than traditional turrón. I thought that it might be that they merited the name because they had a high content of almonds but the one bar we have left in the cupboard has a warning that it may contain traces of nuts so bang goes that theory! I did have a quick Google but the few websites I looked at ignored the bastardised versions of turrón and only talked about the traditional varieties.

Anyway, enough about turrón, because what I meant to write about were mantecados and polvorones. If Maggie is ambivalent about turrón she is definitely hostile towards mantecados and polvorones. Polvo, amongst other things, and stop sniggering those who know other definitions, means dust. Maggie refers to polvorones as dust cakes. Actually we use the same description for the perusas, those melt in the mouth cakes that you get with a glass of mistela around here after eating your rabbit and snail paella. But that's another post. Now, I have to be honest and say that polvorones and mantecados taste pretty similar to me and, whilst they're alright, I'm not that enamoured of them. Spaniards have told me that's because I buy the industrial versions from the big supermarkets and I should go for the more expensive, traditionally made ones to get the authentic experience. Being meek and mild I have done as I was told and bought hand crafted versions but, having done so, I still don't know which is which and I'm still not bowled over by them. They taste fine but I wonder if they continue to be popular more through tradition than for any other reason. After all, for years and years my mum bought Eat Me Dates at Christmas and nobody ever did. 

I asked Wikipedia for the difference between mantecados and polvorones and the definition that I found, at least in the English language version, said that they were, more or less, the same thing. "Often both names are synonymous, but not all mantecados are polvorones. The name mantecado comes from manteca (lard), usually the fat of Iberian pig with which they are made, while the name polvorón is based on the fact that these cakes crumble easily into a kind of dust in the hand or the mouth". To add a bit of detail the Wikipedia entry goes on to say that mantecado is a name for a variety of Spanish shortbreads, which includes the polvorón, and that both are a type of heavy, soft, and very crumbly shortbread made of flour, sugar, milk and nuts (especially almonds). In the Spanish entry (my translation) it says "And what's the difference between a polvorón and a mantecado? The mantecado can have almonds, or not, and it's made with ordinary sugar and flour (actually it says raw meal but I have no idea what that is) and sometimes egg whites, whereas the polvorón is made with toasted flour and icing sugar with all those ingredients being ground down to a very fine or dust-like consistency. Hence the name".

And, as you know if you're in Spain, Christmas is still in full swing so you still have the opportunity to do a bit of market research if you haven't already.

So this is Christmas

I haven't spent Christmas in the UK for umpteen years, so I may not be as expert on British customs as I think. Nonetheless, unless things have changed drastically, the first tentative signs of Christmas show up in the shops in September. By November the telly is full of Christmas ads full of good cheer, bonhomie and cute robins. Cities, towns and villages start to turn on lights from mid-December and even with online shopping I'm sure that shopping centres, supermarkets and places like restaurants and pubs get busier and busier through December, all building up to the big day. Finally, it's Christmas Day. You do your best to look pleased with the illuminated pullover and the novelty underwear and you console yourself by setting about the mountains of food. Boxing Day you might stay at home to and eat and drink more, or it may be that you have to visit relatives. Maybe, instead, you might thirst for action after so much slouching around and go for a bracing walk or head out to one of those unmissable Boxing Day sales. And that's Christmas really, well the Christmas for those of us who are reasonably financially secure. There's obviously the New Year's Eve stuff to come next week but that's not really Christmas, is it?

Now I've done Spanish Christmases to death in previous blogs but I did think I might be able to do a bit on the organisation and pretend it was something new. Just as I said that I may be wrong about British Christmases I have to remind you that any generalisations I make about Spanish Christmases are generalisations. 

Spaniards have their ways of organising things. That methodology may be better or worse but, usually, it's just different. Think about supermarkets. Being a Briton I might expect the Nutella to be alongside the jam but it isn't, it's with the sweets and chocolate. Think about what you consider to be morning, something that stretches till noon, whereas Spaniards consider that it runs till lunchtime, somewhere around 2pm. Consider how Spaniards often share food in the middle of the table, rather than claiming their own private portions. Consider how there are no continuity announcers on Spanish telly. Nothing but smallish details but things that might surprise someone new to Spain. 

It's a bit the same with Christmas. It starts later in Spain than in the UK, only a bit but definitely later. Even Vigo, where they really go to town on Christmas lights, doesn't switch on till around November 20th. Pundits always say that the starting pistol sounds with the Christmas lottery on the 22nd. Christmas Eve is big, big, big for family eating (I don't mean that literally, there's no turkey equivalent for Spaniards, no default Christmas meal, but it's certainly not family that you eat, no roast brother in law). Christmas Day is another day to eat with the family. Some Spanish families do gift giving on that day but it's still, probably, a minority of families who have Santa delivering gifts on Christmas Eve for Christmas Day. Boxing Day is nothing, well unless you're an Esteban in which case it's your saint's day - like in the song where the snow lays round about, deep and crisp and even. 

New Year's Eve is another family do with eating at home, wearing red underwear, popping twelve grapes and cava drinking all centring around midnight but, in most places, it's a family rather than a public event. That's obviously untrue if you're in the Puerta del Sol, or equivalent, at midnight but, as a general rule, the New Year is seen in at home and, after the campanadas, the older folk sip and nibble on whilst the younger people go out to do a bit of partying. 

But the heart of Christmas, the bit where everyone says "it's really about the children" is still to come. As January 5th and 6th approach the shopping frenzy heightens, the Royal Pages will be out and about collecting the Christmas lists for the Three Kings ready for the gift giving overnight on the 5th. That's the evening for the cabalgatas, the cavalcades, the town centre parades with their sweet throwing kings and elves, with camels, geese, flocks of goats (all of which are to be banned soon, or they may have already been outlawed, on animal cruelty grounds). One of the staples of the journalists in the crowd is to ask the sweet child with the high pitched voice which is their favourite King - The European one, the Asian one or the African one, all with their different coloured hair and beard (and maybe a boot polish face). Somewhere some city will get into the news for having Queens as well as Kings or some sort of politically correct twist to the event. This later Christmas is good if you're old enough to still give Christmas cards because, if you forgot any Spanish chums, handing over a card anytime up to the 5th won't be seen as being late. And the final, dying gasp of Christmas, the big doughnut shaped cakes on the 6th, the Roscón de Reyes. Oh, and of course the other big Christmas lottery del Niño, to add a certain roundness to it all.

After that, just as in the UK, there only remains the sighing on the bathroom scales and the sobbing as you check your card statement.

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And, if you're a glutton for punishment here are the links to several previous Christmas blogs 2011, 2012, 2014, 2016, 2017, 2017a

Drawing to a close

As I remember it, In England, Christmas gets off the ground just after the schools start back in September. Nothing frantic but there are unmistakable signs. Displays of trees in John Lewis, re-organisation of the display stands in Clinton's cards. It builds to a crescendo as the 25th approaches. Then a couple of family meals, too much drink, some tedious board games, the DFS 9am Boxing Day Sale and, although you may still be off work, Christmas is over.

In Spain it's different. My sister tells me that in Tenerife there was Christmas all over the place in November but, generally, in most places in Spain, you could miss any signs until December is well under way. Here in Pinoso, for instance, the Christmas lights weren't turned on till the 10th of December. Schools break up a couple of days before Christmas Eve. Families get together on the 24th and 25th echoing that yo-yoing between his and her families of Christmas day and Boxing day in the UK on alternate years. I know, by the way, that times have changed and that not all families are his and hers and that not everyone, even in Western Europe, celebrates Christmas but you'll just have to play along with me here. It is my blog after all.

But Christmas isn't over here. New Year's is also very much part of Christmas and people will be wishing you Felices Fiestas or Feliz Navidad until it becomes Feliz Año (Happy New Year). Then it, sort of, goes back to being Christmas. In fact it builds to a crescendo because, if Christmas really is about the children, then today and tomorrow are the big days.

The pages (servant pages, not pieces of paper pages) have been out all over the country collecting the letters from good boys and girls for the The Three Kings or, as we tend to say, the Three Wise Men. The Kings are the gift givers, working overnight on the 5th January, in much the same way as Father Christmas brought me that orange bulldozer. The Kings as present deliverers has a certain biblical logic given that they turned up in Bethlehem with gold, frankincense and myrrh. In about an hour, they will be parading through city streets all over Spain.

I'm racing with the post a bit. We're staying local this time and going to the cabalgata, the cavalcade, on home turf, in Pinoso. We'd wondered about going to Alcoi (the oldest parade in Spain where the Kings ride in the "wrong" order and where the King's helpers carry ladders to scale balconies to leave presents) or to Elche or Murcia, where the parades are a bit grander, but no. Local it is.

On the telly none of the reporters give the game away. The myth is maintained by hard bitten journalists who explain that the reason there are so many Kings in so many places is because of their magic powers. Children with squeaky voices are interviewed about their gift choices - I want a Nancy, I want a hatchimal - or reading out their wishes that none of the children of the world go hungry. Later tonight on the TV news there will be reports of Kings in helicopters, in boats, on elephants. The shops are still open for those last minute gifts and they will be in Madrid, Barcelona and the like till 10 this evening.

You think it's all over. Well not quite yet.