Tamales Grace Many Christmas Eve Tables : Holidays: For Mexican families, it’s ‘like eating turkey on Thanksgiving,’ a Santa Paula restaurant manager says.

Hot tamales. It’s more than just a slang expression around Christmas, when restaurants and amateur cooks are making the morsels by the thousands. It’s a piping-hot business.

Just days before Christmas, Oxnard’s La Central Bakery is in high grind. Long lines formed Friday at the bakery on Meta Street for masa , the doughy foundation of any good tamale.

Some local cooks had already begun the annual pilgrimage to fill their plastic containers with the white-corn mixture. Manager Carlos Rodriguez estimated La Central will sell 20 tons of the stuff before the holidays are over to customers as far away as San Francisco and out of state.

“No one else makes it like we do. It’s an old family recipe,” he said.

The aroma of pork hung in the air at Corrales Mexican Food restaurant on Thompson Boulevard in Ventura earlier this week as owner Leonor Corrales and daughter Leticia Granados finished up an intense round of tamale-making. Granados estimated they had 150 dozen orders this season.

“They’re a real big mess to make,” she said, wiping down a counter with a towel as another employee began wrapping the bundles in tinfoil for steaming.

Homemade or restaurant-bought, tamales will be the featured entree on many dining room tables tonight.

“Eating tamales is a Mexican tradition on Christmas Eve, like eating turkey on Thanksgiving,” said Dan Diaz, manager of Familia Diaz restaurant on 10th Street in Santa Paula, where his mother, Celia Diaz, and aunt, Nora Baca, boast more than 40 years of tamale-making expertise.

Diaz said his mother and aunt began making their traditional pork tamales three days before Christmas. He will be called in today to do the actual cooking in the tinas , big tin steaming pots.

Traditionally, tamales come in either pork with red chile colorado sauce or chicken with green tomatillo sauce. But Joannafina’s Mexican Cafe at 1127 S. Seaward Ave. features vegetarian tamales and also offers a sweet tamale made of masa , cinnamon, raisins and crushed pineapple--all dribbled with apricot sauce.

Joannafina’s tamales are tied at either end with twists of yarn and cornhusk, an elegant presentation that owner Delfino Lopez-Rojas says is typical of restaurants in his native Mexico City but rare here.

Joanna Lopez-Rojas, his wife and co-owner of the cafe, said their regular tamale customers include actor Harrison Ford, whose mother-in-law lives locally and makes sure he has a constant supply. But at Christmas the demand grows.

“It’s a pretty big thing,” Delfino Lopez-Rojas said. “We’ll probably end up selling about 5,000 tamales this year.”

Lopez-Rojas said Christmas feasts in Mexico are usually rounded out with quesadillas, carnitas, “the ever present rice and beans” and bunuelos-- a tortilla-like, sugar-coated cookie.

While the tamale is almost always the main item (chicken with mole sauce is also popular), it can have a different look depending on the region. Some areas in Mexico and Central America, for example, use folded banana leaves rather than cornhusks to wrap tamales. And some coastal region cooks use iguana meat for filling.

“I’ve never tried it but friends who have say it tastes a little bit like chicken,” Lopez-Rojas said.

Aside from a popular item on Christmas tables, tamales have become a tasty tool for church fund-raising. Members of the Guadalupana Society at San Buenaventura Mission were busy earlier this month making 55 dozen tamales to sell at the downtown street fair and raise money for the mission school.

“It’s a good fund-raiser because many people want tamales, and a lot of people don’t want to make them because they’re busy,” said society President Mary Lou Roberts, who has personally committed to making 40 dozen tamales for friends and relatives this Christmas.

“Also, they’re expensive to make, but if you make them in large quantities it’s very reasonable,” she said.