christmas

How to get more presents at Christmas!

~ Kate Wilson ~ 3 Comments

The day after Christmas is Boxing Day.

Or is it?
Here it is the Feast of Sant Esteve – St Stephen. As in the song Good King Wenceslas.  Good King Wenceslas looked out, on the feast of Stephen.
In Catalunya it is a public holiday and traditionally a day for families to visit and have lunch together. Yes you probably met each other the day before and the day before that,  but why not do it all again, but in a different house?
It was an excuse for me to borrow the wonderful cutlery again.

I love rolling out these parcels….

And to deck the table with pine cones and candles and a beautiful Christmassy table cloth borrowed from Tiffany

My friend Caren kindly dropped by to show me how to make the napkins into little fans. We sat on the sofa folding and fanning and the gorgeous Joel, who is about 9 months old, took his first crawl between us.

A wonderful moment and a nice memory of this day

Here as in many Catholic countries you have not only a birthday but a saints day to celebrate your namesake.

Saints days mean parties and presents.

So if you are called Esteve you get a second hit of gifts on December 26th.

Personally this would put me off calling my child Esteve as it seems to encourage greed at an already overloaded time of year but when I voiced this to ‘someone’  they seemed surprised that the thought had passed through my mind.  You see, it is usual here to name your child after someone else in your family and if your father was called Esteve then it is highly likely you will name your son after him.  Esteve/Stephen is a common name so I suppose thousands of little boys every year receive presents on December 24th and then again two days later. And if they have also adopted the northern custom of Santa Claus there will also be presents on December 25th.

Three days of presents!

Looking for information on this saint I found his name in Greek is Stephanos which means crown and he is the patron saint of horses, coffin makers, stone masons and against headaches.

What exactly is a Saints Day?

I like the idea of having one.

It is the celebration of the saint that shares your name.   I am playing with the idea of adopting Saint Catherine (of Alexandria) as mine. But what it means I am really not sure. Surely it must be more than presents and a meal with the family?  Is there some magic in a name which links us with ‘our’ saint?

And with all the other people with the same name?

For birthdays people here say ‘ Per molt anys’ (for many years) and I was surprised that they say it on the saint day too.
As an outsider – not only in nationality but in religion – I can’t quite get under the skin of these saints days and what they mean but one thing is clear to me – it is easier to remember someone’s saints day than their birthday and it is a nice custom to think today of all the Stephens I know

A taste of Catalan sausage

~ Kate Wilson ~ Leave a comment

The traditional Christmas dinner here is Escudella i Carn d’Olla.

It is a kind of stew into which go chicken, pork, beef, sausage, potatoes, carrots, onions, leeks, celery, checkpeas and large pasta shells.
First you eat the stock with the pastas as a soup. Then there are courses of the meat and vegetables and chickpeas. Of course everything has been boiled up with the meat.  When I say pork by the way I mean more than just the usual parts – there are also trotters, muzzle, tail, ears.

I am 90% vegetarian by the way which makes Christmas lunch an interesting experience.

Thank god for turrons and cava!

24 Hours in Barcelona

~ Kate Wilson ~ Leave a comment

I never forget how lucky I am to be able to do this.
Jump on a train and after 45 minutes I can arrive in the middle of Barcelona on Passeig de Gracia.
For those of you who always think of me basking in the sunshine, I just need to tell you – today it rained – all the time.
But I still went to Barcelona for the day

You have to start the day with a little something

Then I went to visit Santa Maria Del Mar.

We are reading a novel about the life and times of a boy who helped with the construction of this church – all the stones had to be carried from the quarries at Montjuic down to the site near the harbour where the cathedral was being built.

‘Una catedral construida pel poble i per al poble en la Barcelona medieval és l’escenari d’una trepidant història d’intriga, violència i passió.’

I am amazing myself by reading it in Catalan- missing some of the nuances but understanding the general drift. I am very slow and not only because of the language – it is not a book that I imagine has a happy ending!

Medieval life was hard.

Today the doors were closed so I walked around the outside.
Drinking fountains opposite the front door.  I expect when the stone carriers arrived they were always thirsty

Something that looked like a baseball net on one wall but I imagine it was an old lamp holder.

And at the back the view up to the old Born market hall.

Next stop was the Santa Llucia Christmas market to search for small figures to decorate the cake. Most of the stalls sell all that you need for creating a Pessebre – the Catalan nativity scene – including the famous caganers.

The tackiest ones have piles of Tiòs ready for December 24th

All day I hunted for these very comfortable house shoes

This shoe shop was very stylish and friendly but didn’t have what I wanted.

In the end I found them back in Granollers!
Where I also caught sight of Santa Claus shopping in the rain.





 

 

Rice Pudding

~ Kate Wilson ~ 2 Comments

A lovely Saturday – sunny and with nothing special planned. So, after a trip to the shops to buy Christmas lights (yet again succumbing to the cheap prices in the Chinese Bazaar as for some reason the market stalls charge about double for the same thing) I retreated to the kitchen. With Radio 3 playing flamenco jazz in the background I pulled together these ingredients

 And made this

Such comfort food for a December day as we approach the solstice.

Time to move on after Christmas

~ Kate Wilson ~ 6 Comments

 

By now I am usually ready to let go of Christmas – I want all the decorations to be gone and the Christmas carols to stop going around in my head.

New Year was a more exciting celebration in Scotland but I can’t quite change the topic until I write a little more about my first Christmas in Catalunya.
I was fortunate to be invited to join a Catalan family for the celebrations. On Christmas Eve I beat my first Tió and received a gift from its rear end.
On Christmas Day I had a wonderful meal – eating the traditional Sopa de Nadal but, as a semi vegetarian, turning down the meat course of pigs muzzle, pigs feet, pigs tail and other, I’m sure delicious, things. Of course there was cava too and lots of turronsThe following day was St Esteve Day – the feast of St Stephen. People asked me the origin of the name Boxing Day and I had no answer – anyone know? As there is someone called Esteve in the family it was his saints day which meant more presents for him and another special meal with all the family. This time I was helping to organise it so I contributed traditional British mince pies with brandy butter and cream and we all ate more turrons and drank more cava.
On January 5th it is the eve of El Dia de Reis and in the streets there was a large procession of floats with three kings seated on high, drawn by wonderful green John Deere tractorsChildren and their parents lined the streets armed with umbrellas (it was raining hard) which they turned upside down to catch the sweets which were thrown from the floatsOn Epiphany, or Kings,  more presents are given, to be found in your shoes which you leave out the night before. Then another family dinner which ends with the wonderful cake called Tortell de ReisInside this there are hidden two objects – a small king figure and a bean. If you get the bean you must pay for the cake and if you get the king you are crowned for the day.