Christmas In Portugal

How Do The Portuguese Celebrate Christmas?

If you’re one of those travelers who like to travel during the holiday season, think of other popular European destinations for their outdoor Christmas markets before heading to Lisbon. You might consider booking flights, But what if you really know how to embrace the holiday spirit and learn more about the Portuguese Christmas folk heritage? So you can stay in our country in December while enjoying a truly unique tradition.

Whether you are religious or not, the best way to get right into the Christmas spirit in Portugal is to spend time with your family. If you’re a couple and your relatives are from different parts of the country, it’s not uncommon to spend Christmas Eve with one whole side of the maternal family and Christmas Day with the other. Allows easy movement. In the following year, we usually rotate because it matters who we spend our vacation with, and we don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings.

Santa Claus (“Painatal”) is believed to deliver presents to children on Christmas Eve, not on Christmas Day. Put presents under the Christmas tree or in shoes by the fireplace. However, some say that the presents were not brought by Santa Claus but by Baby Jesus.

Christmas Eve In Portugal

Christmas is the most crucial celebration in other countries, but not in Portugal. The main holiday is Christmas Eve, December 24th. Families gather to enjoy dinner and parties late into the night.

Meetings usually start between 6:00 pm and 7:00 pm. Dinner is served for several hours from 8:00 pm to 9:00 pm, but families spend time together drinking wine and enjoying appetizers.

Bacalhau, or salted cod, is the star of the Portuguese Christmas dinner. During ‘consoada’, Portuguese families enjoy oven-baked cod and potatoes, boiled eggs, and cabbage. Cod is also typically served as an appetizer to pastis de bacalhau, fried cod fritters.

Some families enjoy cod as a main dish in another dish. The Portuguese say there are 1001 ways to cook cod. Another Christmas Eve dish made with this ingredient is bacalhau a Gomez de sa, cod cooked with potatoes and onions and topped with a hard-boiled egg.

However, the price of cod has increased exponentially, and today most people cannot afford a whole cod. Therefore, many choose an alternative Christmas meal that is cheaper.

Leftover cod is kept for the next day and made into roupa Velha, which means old clothes.

This is a delicious mix of cod, potatoes, Portuguese cabbage, and boiled eggs.

There are plenty of delicious desserts after dinner. The table is usually transformed into a “dessert table” where many Portuguese Christmas desserts are displayed. The most traditional Christmas dessert in Portugal is boro lei, a traditional cake filled with fruit and nuts. Other traditional desserts include arroz doce, labanada, pao de ro and sonhos.

After dinner, enjoy the harbor and coffee while the family chats, laugh, and plays games.

Gifts are traditionally opened at midnight. Even small children often get up and open presents by this point. There is often a mandated Christmas gift giver who stands by the Christmas tree and distributes the presents.

However, for religious people, midnight is the Mass de Gallo. This is the Mass celebrated on Christmas Eve and begins at midnight. Catholics go to their local church for this critical Mass. They open presents later or in advance. After unwrapping the gifts, the

families spend a few hours together before heading to their respective homes. For many families, Christmas Eve can be pretty late, finishing around 1:00 am or at 2:00.

Christmas Day In Portugal

On Christmas Day, December 25th, it was historically customary to use leftovers from previous meals to prepare a dish of cod, potatoes, and all the remaining vegetables sautéed in olive oil and garlic. Called roupa velha (meaning old clothes), this handy recipe favors the more obvious symbol of wealth: a whole roast turkey (often stuffed with other ground beef or Portuguese-cured meats). , which is often overlooked these days.

If in the north you will notice that a common tradition is to get to eat formigos or mexidos de Natal, the sort of bittersweet scramble with eggs, bread, Port wine, nuts, and honey, in the Alentejo Christmas isn’t really Christmas without a sweet version of Miga’s, called Migas does, in this case, prepared right with old bread, eggs, milk, and sugar. It is considered a part of tradition to sip Port wine and other old Portuguese fortified wines right during and after dessert, so you can also munch on a plethora of dried fruits and nuts, which are usually right on top of the table for several days around Christmas.

Religious Christmas In Portugal: Nativity Scenes And The Rooster’s Mass

Besides other colorful Christmas decorations, nativity scenes known in Portuguese as presépios are still popular inside homes beside the Christmas tree and at a larger scale in town plazas and even street roundabouts. Nativity scenes include baby Jesus (in some cases only added to the presépio on December 25th after the rooster’s Mass, officially when Christ was born), Mary and Joseph, and also the three wise men, village people like shepherds, farmers or folks carrying water containers, as well as various animals. If you are to do a presépio at home in a very traditional manner, you’d typically decorate the scene with natural moss, but this is discouraged nowadays for environmental preservation reasons. If you’re wondering just how much Portuguese care about nativity scenes, the city of San Paio de Oreiros entered the Guinness Book of Records in 2012 as hosting the world’s most extensive movable nativity scene. It is worth noting that in addition to the backdrop of the birth of Jesus in the manger, the most significant expression of the original religious aspect of Christmas in Portugal is realized during the Midnight Mass of the Hen on Christmas Eve. Catholics gather to pray and kiss a statue of the newborn baby Jesus.

Portuguese Christmas Dishes

On Christmas Eve, a stew of salted cod, vegetables (bacalhau com todos) and is the most common recipe in Portuguese households.

But in the north, for example, octopus is served with bacalhau. Minho and the northern region of Trás os Montes have strong historical ties with the neighboring Spanish province of Galicia. Salted cod became a Christmas tradition after the 1930s when Salazar’s dictatorship heavily promoted it as part of national identity.

In the past, northerners already enjoyed octopus for their Christmas Eve dinner, which meant smuggling octopus across the border despite all the coercions and restrictions imposed by the Estado Novo regime. However, they continued to enjoy their own traditions: when the forbidden fruit is the sweetest, the forbidden octopus is also the sweetest.

On the other side of the country, in the southern Algarve, proximity to the sea brings deliciousness to the Christmas table. The Algarves enjoy mussel-like mussels at Christmas, often steamed in a cataplana, and surf and turf dishes paired with chicken.

Similar to Spain, Portugal’s traditional Christmas dish is called ‘consoada’ and is eaten on Christmas Eve. Serve salted cod with green vegetables, boiled potatoes, and boiled eggs. This is usually followed by shellfish, venison, or other expensive foods. Other famous Christmas delicacies include roasted turkey, cakes, fried cookies, nuts, and other treats.

Whimsical Christmas Traditions Across Portugal

When it is celebrated nationwide, there are other unusual traditions taking place in certain parts of Portugal. 

For example, in the northern interior of Trás-os-Montes, more precisely in the town of Valje, individual village boys wear pagan masks (as shown in the photo here). They get together on December 25th to jump, dance, and rattle. Caretos de Varge, as they are called in Portugal, is believed to have originated in Celtic traditions and passed down from generation to generation. During the Christmas season, the town of Varge is incredibly colorful and vibrant, a far cry from the typical Christmas atmosphere.

Inland, mainly in the Beira Inland region, just a little further down from Tras os Montes to the Alentejo, a large bonfire is lit on December 24th and burns all night long. Known as Madeiros or Madeiros de Natal, this tradition sees people gather in front of the town’s church, and the celebration extends beyond the Coq Mass.

One of the most unconventional Portuguese Christmas traditions takes place in Braga, north of Minho. Here, before Christmas Eve, residents gather at Casa das Bananas, a local tavern, to eat bananas with sweet Moscatel de Setubal wine. The ceremony, known as Bananeiro, brings thousands of people from Bracarense together for a pre-Christmas drink and the perfect excuse to wish each other a happy holiday before heading home to spend time with family.

Portuguese Christmas celebrations traditionally last until January 6th. Epiphany is known locally as Dia de Reis. Although this day is not celebrated as it used to be, it is a day that many still make a point of enjoying at least a slice of boro lei. In some small towns across the country, it was and still is common for small groups to gather door-to-door to play music. This is called “cantar os reis” or “cantar as Janeiras”. H. By singing a song announcing the birth of Christ, usually 1 Happy New Year!

This serves as an excuse for friends to get together and celebrate, and of course, eating and drinking are part of this musical tradition. Had to. After you show up at someone’s house, the homeowner usually offers you something to nibble on. B. Candies or dried fruits or quick drinks. Young people can also use this as an opportunity to solicit donations and raise money for excursions and other school activities.

End Of Christmas

Christmas officially ends on January 6th, but for many people in Portugal, December 26th is the day he returns to work. Everything stops on New Year’s Eve or Réveillon, and most people take the day off on January 1st.

In many parts of Portugal, especially the Algarve, people sing New Year’s Day (a custom known as Janeiras) between January 1st and 6th. Groups gather in towns and walk around singing to people wishing them a Happy New Year, and asking for leftovers (or money).

Christmas officially ends after six days.

Conclusion 

If you travel to the Algarve in December, you can usually expect good weather, especially by Northern European standards. It’s usually sunny most of the time, although it can get rainy and windy at times.

Portugal is a low and narrow country with varying climates, so most of the rest of Portugal is usually colder than here. For example, Porto is far north and usually much colder. Further north are Braga, Guimaraes and Vila Real.

It even snows in some parts of Portugal. Yes, you can celebrate a White Christmas in Portugal by driving towards the Estrela Mountains. You can even ski!