A Taste of Christmas

Slap, slap, slap go the hands of Olga Gutierrez as she pats doughy masa into a fresh cornhusk. Next comes a handful of shredded pork, an olive and a dollop of smoky chili sauce.

Then Gutierrez, a resident of El Monte, wraps the cornhusk tightly around her creation with a deft twist. Finally she lays the finished tamale down next to a pile that grows bigger by the minute with help from sisters-in-law, cousins, daughters and daughters-in-law.

Making tamales is a Christmas ritual that has been handed down through generations since before Gutierrez’s family left Guanajuato in central Mexico to settle in Los Angeles. Tamales are more than mere sustenance; they bring the family together around a warm hearth to laugh and celebrate life as they prepare a food that dates back to the Aztec empire.

Gutierrez learned from her grandmother how to make tamales. Her husband, Ernie, a former El Monte city councilman, makes the tamale sauce using five kinds of chiles and spices. The couple taught their children the ancient art, and now 5-year-old grandchildren who can barely peer over the dining room table look on as 16 pairs of hands plunge into 25-pound dishes filled with masa and meat. Masa is a paste made of cornmeal, cumin, red chile, oil and salt.

“It’s a family affair,” Olga Gutierrez said. “My daughter promised me, ‘Yes, mama, I’ll keep the tradition alive,’ and now they do most of the work, and I tell them what to do.”

Across the table, the talk is of making the perfect tamale. All their friends and neighbors make tamales too, and the families swap each others’ tamales and sample each for flavor, texture and moistness. Usually, they conclude that their own taste the best.

As they work, the Gutierrez family members speak interchangeably in Spanish and English, the older ones advising the younger ones how much pork to put in and how to wrap the husk so the masa doesn’t fall out during steaming.

“I’m health-conscious; I’m trying to get my mom to make them with chicken or turkey,” said niece Monica Munoz, 28, a dentist.

“Sure it’s a lot of cholesterol, but we only eat them once a year,” her aunt, Mary Galiazzo, responded.

Galiazzo, who is one of Ernie’s five sisters, grumbles good-naturedly that making tamales is a lot of work. She says the family used to make them on Christmas Eve, but the work went past midnight and left them too exhausted to enjoy Christmas Day.

The tamale-making started Monday. By then, the Gutierrez family had put up its Nativity scene, with 19th-Century ceramic figures of the Holy Family, the Wise Men and angels brought by Olga Gutierrez’s grandmother from Mexico.

Devoutly religious, the Gutierrez family also enacts Las Posadas, a holiday tradition of Mexican Catholics that symbolizes Joseph and Mary’s journey to Bethlehem in search of lodging.

Gathering up to 70 members of their extended family as well as neighbors and friends, the Gutierrez family once traveled up and down the street, stopping at each home with lighted candles to sing the traditional song, Las Posadas , which means shelter in English.

Now, each Christmas Eve they converge in front of the rambling, ranch-style Gutierrez house. Some family members stand outside the home and sing, in Spanish:

In the name of heaven

We ask for shelter

Because she can’t walk anymore

My beloved wife.

From inside, others answer:

This is no inn

Continue on

I can’t open

Don’t loiter here.

The song goes back and forth until the family agrees to open its doors to the Holy Family. The littlest Gutierrez, who is carrying the ceramic figure of Jesus, solemnly places the baby in the Nativity creche. Then it’s time for festivities, music, a pinata and food.

“It’s important to keep tradition,” said David Bonilla, 22, who is married to the Gutierrezes’ daughter Concepcion, 21. In his lap sits their son, David Jr., 21 months, who is too young to understand the hubbub that surrounds him.

But he soon will. Since marrying into the Gutierrez family, David Bonilla says he has rediscovered many Mexican traditions that he intends to keep alive.

“When he grows up,” Bonilla says about his son, “We’ll teach him. It will just keep going through the generations and never fade away.”