Tamale Tradition : Never Mind the Wait, It Just Isn’t <i> Navidad </i> Without <i> Masa</i>

Waiting for masa has become a fact of Christmastime that Lupita Gonzalez, for one, doesn’t mind. Even if it does take an hour or more.

And on Thursday, she had plenty of company.

Scores of customers gathered to greet the dawn of Christmas Eve and the owner of El Toro Carniceria to buy the precious substance used to make tamales. Some drove from the other side of Orange County to seek it.

Good-natured chatter among those who line up makes the time pass quickly, Gonzalez said, and the corridos streaming from the guitar of a strolling musician in a cowboy hat helps too. “If I close my eyes it reminds me of my home in Chihuahua,” said Gonzalez, 31, of Placentia.

During the holidays, preparing tamales is almost as important as bearing gifts in the Mexican and Guatemalan communities of Southern California--and masa is the main ingredient.

Without it, Christmas just isn’t Navidad .

At one point, there were more than 130 eager customers outside the store as passersby slowed down to see what was causing the congestion. One motorist shouted: “What’s going on? Somebody giving free money?”

“We’re standing in this mother of a line to buy masa, “ Hilda Refugio shouted back irritably.

Her 14-year-old daughter, Ascension Refugio, offered jokingly, “Maybe we should forget the masa and buy some tamales already prepared?”

“Are you crazy, we’ll be killed,” her mother snapped back.

One of the store owners, Joe E. Bonillo, 38, who along with his brothers runs two other markets selling masa in Orange County, said it’s virtually become tradition at Christmastime to see hundreds of customers arrive early, spontaneously forming a line.

“It’s kind of strange, from the first Christmas we opened, I still can’t figure out how they know where to stand. It’s almost magical,” Bonillo said.

“Some of the people have been coming here since we first opened 15 years ago,” he said. “It’s kind of fun to see.”

The demand for masa is so heavy that more than 60 tons of corn are brought in during Christmas week and prepared in huge vats where the corn kernels are boiled and ground down into yellowish doughy batches that wrap around the stuffing of a tamale. On a regular week, he buys 15 tons of corn.

“Sometimes there are so many people during Christmas that we run out and they have to wait an extra hour in line before we can prepare some more masa,” Bonillo said.

El Toro Carniceria is one of a handful of places in Orange County where masa is made or sold. In Westminster, Las Lupitas Market regularly runs out of the product and resorts to taking names on a list and calling customers when the masa arrives.

Store owner Guadalupe Solano said every Christmas is the same and has been for the last 12 years.

“We have to order 3,000 pounds of masa during the Christmas week,” Solano said. “No other time of the year compares to Christmastime.”

Most of the customers waiting in line are women with children at their side. They say it is difficult to find stores that sell masa in Orange County. “In Los Angeles, it’s easy to find them. But here, very few places exist,” said Florentina Bermudez, an Anaheim grandmother of 15.

Alejandra Mendoza lives in Buena Park and makes the trek to the Santa Ana store each Christmas. She said she can recall her mother, grandmother and great-grandmother making tamales for Christmas.

“I believe that my family must have been making tamales since the Aztecs,” Mendoza said. “My son told me that the Mayas were the first to make tamales. I don’t really know, I just make them.”

Not only is masa used for tamales, but for a chocolate-like drink called champurrado .

Nazario Bastida, 22, a Santa Ana resident whose family migrated from Michoacan, Mexico, more than 15 years ago, said that for his family and many Latinos, preparing feasts with masa is, as much as anything, tradition.

“We all look forward to tamales and champurrado, “ Bastida said. “It wouldn’t be Christmas without them.”

“It’s a ritual we go through every time. We buy the masa, then it takes us four hours to prepare and finally we eat around 9 p.m.,” Bastida said. “And we eat the tamales while drinking champurrado. That’s Christmas.”