Olá a todos,
Primeiro que tudo, Feliz Natal! 🎄🎁
If you live in Portugal or live abroad but are very interested to know more about Portuguese culture and history, you should know that Portuguese people love Christmas.
But Christmas isn’t a big holiday just in Portugal. Christmas is one of the most celebrated holidays around the globe, even among members of other religions. What historically started as the celebration of Jesus Christ’s birthday became more of a season to celebrate love, unity, the joy of family and friends, and an opportunity to indulge in great memories. It’s a time to cook great food with others and drink some good stuff!
In this letter, I want to highlight some of the most interesting facts about Christmas (Natal) in Portugal—what are the old Christmas traditions the Portuguese still carry today?
If Christmas is about food, so the King of all ingredients in Portugal is bacalhau! This salted and dry fish was introduced to the Portuguese by Vikings, who encouraged the Portuguese to travel to the cold waters of Canada to find it. It is known that the hunt for bacalhau started around the 16th century, but it was only during the Estado Novo of Salazar that the dictator launched the Campanha do Bacalhau. As bacalhau was very cheap back then, especially when compared to fresh fish from the Portuguese coast, Salazar invited all the Portuguese families to cook and eat bacalhau on Christmas.
But why eat it on Christmas Eve? Portugal has been celebrating many traditions imposed by the Catholic Church for years, and one of them is the advento. For about four weeks before Christmas, people would prepare to celebrate Christ's birth and would do it in penitence. Nowadays, many people still carry on the traditions without thinking of it as the advento itself. For example, many people have the presépio at home by the Christmas tree, which is a form of embracing the spirituality of Christ. Another major form of this penitence is the abstention from all kinds of meats—this explains why bacalhau became a very popular ingredient in Natal.
In today’s Portuguese society, for the most part, people fast on meats only during the consoada (Christmas Eve, the 24th) and not for the four weeks before Christmas. In addition, modern families would not have meat only for the main dishes of both lunch and dinner on this day. For most families nowadays, it’s very normal to have chouriço, presunto, and queijo around for the whole day, while the more religious ones would not have it.
Alongside with bacalhau, polvo became very popular during the advento. In the North of Portugal particularly, but also all over the country (depending on the family), polvo is also on the Christmas table. This cephalopod mollusk inhabits the Portuguese coast a lot, but it became very popular in Galicia. For years, polvo was trafficked from Portugal to Galicia, and as a result of that, it became very traditional in the North of Portugal (in the Minho region).
On Christmas Day (25th), then, comes the meat. Unlike the bacalhau, there aren't common meats with the same popularity across the country. It all depends on the resources in different regions. In some regions, there are more ovelhas and cabras, then if that is the case, the cabrito is the preferred choice. In other regions, there is more porco, then, the leitão is the selected choice. There’s also the peru and the capão in other regions. The meat changes, but there’s one common thing: the preferred cooking method is the wood oven. Cooked alongside with potatoes. Yes, protein, fat, and carbs. Did you think the Mediterranean diet was all vegetables?
As far as the sweets and the desserts go, there are many (too many) traditional ones during this time of the year. One thing in common in the Portuguese pastry is the presence of eggs and sugar, and this isn’t different at Christmas. Perhaps the one that I like the most and was made by many generations within my family are the fried filhózes. There are many versions of them, but the one my mom does include aguardente and orange juice. They are oily, crispy, and sugary, with some tones of cinnamon. Other sweets and desserts include rabanadas, arroz doce, bolo rei, farófias, sonhos, or aletria.
In Praça Luís de Camões, located near the Cathedral of Guarda, people gather around the Madeiro de Natal. (Beira Alta TV)
I’m going to finish this letter by talking about a different Christmas tradition that is very popular historically, but is often not referred to in today’s social media. I’m talking about the Christmas Madeiro! This is a very old tradition, especially in the North and in the interior. For days before Christmas, the people from several villages bring big logs and wood from the forest to the center of their village (usually to a square very close to the church). They stack all the wood to a size that many times is as big as the buildings surrounding it. Then, on the night of the 24th, the Madeiro is set on fire, and that fire burns for days. After the Missa do Galo (Midnight Mass), everyone gathers around the fire to share good old stories about Christmas and warm up on a usual cold winter night.
Anyway, there’s much more that can be said about this topic, but this letter is already pretty long! I hope you enjoy Christmas, and I hope you find time to celebrate the Portuguese traditions related to the Natal.
Don’t forget, if you care about Portugal in any way, it’s important to learn about its traditions. Even if you don’t celebrate Christmas, at least, understand it, so you have something to talk about with your local neighbors.
Feliz Natal a todos e boas festas! 🎄🎁