Store helps keep alive tradition of Christmas tamales

Corn husks, check.

Chilies, check.

Masa, check.

Even as customers ticked items off their shopping lists, the out-the-door line at La Esperanza Mexican Food Products in south Sacramento never seemed to get shorter Saturday.

The reason: The Mexican tradition of eating tamales during the holiday season.

"Christmas without tamales is like saying there's no Santa," said Maryann Bernardino, 52, of Sacramento, who was buying pre-made tamales to take to a holiday party.

Soon, she'll return to buy the ingredients for tamales that she'll make with relatives. Together, as they do every year, they will spread masa on cornhusks, add seasoned meat and then fold once, twice, three times, until 200 of the wrapped treats have been made.

There's no recipe to refer to, just the knowledge that's been passed down through the generations by making tamales together, year after year.

"It's a tradition," said Emma Delgadillo, whose family has owned La Esperanza on Franklin Boulevard since the 1970s. "For Christmas, we make tamales. It's like at Thanksgiving, you make a turkey – it's been always that we get together to make tamales."

Tamales date back more than 5,000 years, according to Refugio Rochin, a retired professor of Chicano studies at the University of California, Davis. The natives of Mesoamerica used tamales as offerings to the dead and the gods. When the Spanish came to the Americas, they brought Catholicism – and its Christian holidays – and the traditions were married, Rochin said.

Today, with modern mobility and busy schedules, Christmas is one of the few times a year extended families get together. Tamale-making means that rare occasion is even more special, Rochin said.

"It reminds us that we have heritage," he said.

Plus, everyone gets to share in the work and the reward.

"It's just as much work to make four or five tamales, so you might as well bring a crowd and make a lot more," Rochin said. "If you want four or five of them, you go down to the Mexican store and buy them for a dollar each."

This is the busiest season for the La Esperanza market, when employees work long hours and on weekends to meet the demand for pre-made tamales – which the store asks people to order ahead of time. Spreading masa and folding the husk, spreading and folding, spreading and folding, they create stacks of savory tamales, each wrapped in white paper.

The store also makes masa from finely ground corn, lard or shortening, salt, baking powder and water, and sells it for 65 cents a pound to those who want to make tamales at home.

Belinda Verlod, 49, of Sacramento, was doing just that Saturday. The Siemens warehouse worker bought 60 pounds of masa to make 350 tamales because she gives them to friends as gifts.

"How many each gets depends on how good a friend they are," she joked.

Esther Gonzales, 63, wasn't going to make tamales this year because most of her relatives are out of town. But she changed her mind Saturday and decided to downsize from 240 to five dozen.

"It doesn't feel like Christmas without them," she said while buying the ingredients.

Josie Melendrez, 63, of Rancho Cordova, is also going the route of fewer tamales this year. In the past, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles all gathered to make tamales, but this year only Melendrez and her son will have their hands in the corn dough.

One thing that never changes however is the recipe.

"We always make them the same way," she said. "I know everybody says theirs is the best, but ours – it's like my grandmother used to say, the main ingredient is love."

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