NOCHE BUENA
What's the best thing that comes after mass and the
opening of gifts on Christmas Eve? That's right! The foooood!
Many Filipinos call this holiday feast "Noche Buena;" others,
"Media Noche." Literally, Noche Buena means "good night" and Media
Noche, "midnight" in Spanish. Beyond that, most of those I talked
to don't really know the difference, or much less insist that
what they call the feast is right. Except my Lola Tesay. She says
"Media Noche" can stand for any midnight snack or meal, even in
wakes. She says that for Christmas Eve, it's "Noche Buena" because
it's welcoming Mama Mary and Baby Jesus into the home. That's
a good idea. But anyway, everybody agrees that the food is really
very special -- so special that some, if not all of it, is served
ONLY at Christmas.
Like what? Ah, that depends on the family. We're most
familiar with puto bumbong and bibingka that we get from vendors
around the church. Steaming hot with grated coconut, the butter
melting on top of them, mixing with sprinkled sugar - mmmm! Cebuanos
and other Visayans have puto-maya enjoyed with cups of either
tsokolate espeso (rich, thick, hot chocolate drink) or tsokolate
aguado (not so rich with more water). Puto-maya is actually more
like suman than the puto we know. It's malagkit na bigas cooked
by steaming and flavored with a little ginger, coconut milk, and
some sugar. We scoop it onto our plates because it's not wrapped
in banana leaves. And it's perfect too with scoops of sweet, ripe
mangoes - if you can get some at Christmas.
In Laoag, people cook tupig, another type of suman
that's so yummy, you'll eat so many. It's made of powdered malagkit
so it's a little smooth, flavored with molasses and coconut. To
cook it, they bury it under a burning mound of rice chaff, so
you also get that special smoked flavor. Aaahh! Then south of
Ilocos, in Vigan, they cook tinubong in a very unique manner.
They pour some half-cooked puto batter into long bamboo tubes.
They put these tubes over burning coals. By the time the coals
die down, the bamboo is charred and ready to cut. Each family
member gets a cut of the bamboo filled with hot, cooked tinubong.
Those are just some of our native delicacies that
come out only during Christmas. But times change, of course. Now
there are people selling them all throughout the year. For older
people, eating Christmas food outside the holiday season brings
back memories. For youngsters like you, however, you might just
grow up thinking that they're not exactly Christmas-only food.
Actually, the changes are not just with the native
delicacies - and whether they're on the Christmas table or not.
For example, I remember what my parents told me. They said that
when they were young, their Noche Buena would always be queso
de bola and Chinese ham cooked in sweet, fruity syrup. They also
had castanas, like in the song "Chestnuts roasting on an open
fire…"
We also had those when we were younger, when our
doctor uncle was given lots of those by his patients. Then when
times got harder and our uncle had passed away, we looked past
expensive ham and smelly queso de bola and bland chestnuts. We
saved our money to buy different chocolates. We learned to mix
different kinds of salads, experimenting with new ingredients
every season. Mama cooked chicken hamonada and baked special kinds
of bread. We made cookies, different kinds of polvoron, caramel
popcorn.
I know one family who cooked Japanese food one Christmas;
another baked their own pizza and pasta. The idea is (and it always
has been) preparing food that's really great-tasting that you
probably can't find anywhere else. Or at least each member of
the family tries to make something that he or she is good at.
After plenty of Christmases, when you get as old as
I am, you'll discover something else about Noche Buena. I saw
it just now, and I can tell you while you're still young: There
are some other things that make the food - and the feast - really
special: that we prepared it together as a family and that we
were going to enjoy it together. That it comes only once a year,
when we brothers and sisters were at home and on a holiday break
makes it doubly special.
Which is probably the point of Noche Buena. Tradition
or no tradition, it doesn't matter what you eat but who you share
it with - on that particular Christmas Eve.