Family gathered round, twinkling holiday décor, and lots of good food – the key ingredients for Christmas in Portugal are much like in Canada. The difference lies in the details: cod and roast rooster, gifts stuffed into footwear, and outdoor nativity scenes.
As we spend our first Christmas in Portugal, we’re embracing the differences. Except for one. Santa’s North Pole address is in Canada, not in Laponia Finland, as one of our Portuguese friends stated. I can accept zero chance of a snowy Natal and even cod rather than tortière on Christmas Eve, but I just can’t bring myself to deny Santa’s nationality.
“You are mistaken,” said our friend Antonio, with a Santa-like twinkle in his eye. “It’s not in Canada. Laponia is where Santa lives.”
Hints of the upcoming season began in late November when trucks loaded with wood and metal frames trundled into the main square in front of Alcobaça’s Monastery. Little wooden market stalls, a carousel, archways shaped like gifts, a faux skating rink, and an enormous cone-shaped Christmas tree soon arose. Shooting-star lights went up on the lampposts outside our apartment and around town. We were still walking around in T-shirts during the day, but it began to feel festive.
On Dec. 1, Pai Natal (Father Christmas) came to town, leading the parade instead of following at the end, as in North America. Marching bands played familiar Christmas songs, school kids and adults dressed as elves, stilt-walkers stretched by, and jesters and hobos drove mini-train-engines and bikes. It felt just like the small-town parades we’d spent decades attending in Canada. We found comfort and joy in the familiar amidst the different.
We practised the standard holiday greetings for Christmas in Portugal: Feliz Natal = Merry Christmas. Boas Festas = Happy Holidays. Feliz Ano Novo = Happy New Year.
Research on the internet told me about Portuguese Christmas traditions, but some of it conflicted with what we were seeing. So, I talked to two Portuguese friends about their family traditions. Here’s what I discovered.
Above all, family
“What are the key ingredients for Christmas in Portugal?” I asked Teresa Machado, whose family owns A Casa Garrafeira (a wine shop that we visit, ahem, often) as well as A Casa restaurant and pottery shop. “Family, warm food, a fireplace, bolo rei (a typical Portuguese cake),” she said. “And cod. There is no Christmas without cod. I love cod.”
Antonio Laureano also didn’t hesitate to put family first.
“It’s not about the gifts but keeping family together,” said Antonio, who runs Go West Tours. “When you have a relative who died, it’s a strange feeling not having that person there. You feel their absence. It’s also strange when people are alive but not there. It’s always missing the person.”
I knew exactly what he meant. This will be the first Christmas we’ve been entirely without family. And it is indeed strange.
“Now you have a kind of a way of being there, via computer,” Antonio reassured me.
Nativity scenes (presépios)
In mid-December at a trailhead, we passed a family returning to their car with a plastic bin full of emerald-green moss – no doubt destined for their presépio. These outdoor nativity scenes are said to be the main Christmas decoration, although we’ve seen more Christmas trees.
Teresa said fewer people set up presépios these days in favour of more secular décor. But Antonio’s family still sets up ceramic wise men, the holy family, village homes, animals, a windmill, and even a blue-paper pond. They gather branches, sand, rocks and moss to create the setting. “You don’t buy it,” he explained. “You go to the fields and grab it.”
In keeping with its plain Cistercian roots, Alcobaça’s Monastery features simple decorations: a wreath with advent candles and a presépio with just the holy family.
Christmas trees
Christmas trees have reportedly been gaining in popularity since their advent in Portugal in the 1970s. Both Antonio and Teresa said their families had real trees when they were small, but they now have artificial ones.
“We always had a real one, a pine tree,” said Teresa. “But we had problems getting a tree, needed car to get the tree, it gets all sticky. The first years I didn’t enjoy the fake one that much but now I’m used to it.”
We haven’t seen any real Christmas trees for sale and we didn’t want to have to store an artificial one so, as we did the last two years while travelling, we made our own. We gathered pinecones from a nearby forest and picked up the small button-like seeds from eucalyptus trees, baking them all in the oven to kill any stowaways. After I painted the seeds with red nail polish, Bill used a hot-glue gun to assemble our tree and wrap it in lights.
Savoury food
Cod (bacalhau) is the required dish for the main Christmas meal on Dec. 24 (although people from northern Portugal often have octopus instead).
“There was a time in my life that I didn’t enjoy it that much,” recalled Teresa. “But at Christmas I always love it. It’s very comfortable to have cod in that night.”
The traditional Christmas Eve cod dish features boiled cod served with boiled cabbage, boiled eggs, and boiled potatoes, all drizzled in olive oil. Many families opt now for tastier cod dishes; this country is said to have 365 ways of cooking its beloved cod. However, Antonio prefers the traditional.
“I usually like the regular, the boiled, maybe because of tradition,” he said. “At Christmas it should be that way.”
Portugal was quite a poor country until the dictatorship ended in 1974, hence many traditional dishes have basic ingredients. But as the country’s fortunes have improved, so has its holiday menu.
“Today it’s a more rich table,” he explained. “Eggs, butter, shrimp, paté, cheese, olive, chorizo. When you go to eat the codfish you are full. Before, you were starving when you went to eat the codfish.”
Teresa’s father lived in England for many years, so they enjoy turkey after the cod. Antonio’s family sometimes has a turkey but more often a rooster (capão) roasted slowly for several hours or baby goat (cabrito) baked with potatoes around it.
Sweets
Bolo rei (king’s cake) is the must-have sweet dessert – a ring of dried-fruit-studded cake topped with more dried fruit. Those who don’t like dried fruit will have bolo rainha (queen’s cake), a more recent concoction that has nuts instead of fruit. That’s what Antonio prefers.
A small metallic figure (doll, gnome, car) and a dried bean are traditionally baked into the bolo rei. Whoever gets the figure keeps it as a gift, but whoever gets the bean must pay for the bolo rei next year. However, that tradition is no more, for safety reasons.
Antonio’s family usually also has a pudim (a thick flan baked in a ring mould), rabanadas (like French toast), filhós (a small round donut; like a Timbit) and coscorões (a fried fritter with slits cut into it).
Teresa’s family’s must-have sweets are the bolo rei, sonhos (fluffy tiny donut with cinnamon and sugar), and tronco de Natal (like a yule log). They might also have filhós and coscorões. Some people make lampreia – a custard-like confection of sugar and eggs shaped like a lamprey fish (eel-like). I’ve seen photos of it, with maraschino cherries for eyes.
Desserts are often served with either port (fortified wine) or ginjinha (a liqueur made from sour cherries).
Santa Claus vs Baby Jesus
My internet research told me many Portuguese kids believe Baby Jesus brings gifts on Christmas Eve, but neither Antonio nor Teresa had heard that.
“For us, it’s Santa definitely,” said Teresa, who used to put her letter to Santa inside a sock, although the gifts appeared under the tree. “I was around 10 when I discovered (that Santa wasn’t real). I was very sad.” But it’s important for children to believe there’s someone special looking after them. “If you don’t do it when they’re young, they won’t grow their imaginations and have some magic in their lives.”
When her parents were small, children would put out their shoes for Santa to fill with tiny presents. “There was lots of poverty and at Christmas they had new shoes to go to mass. It was different back then.”
Antonio agreed that times have changed for the better. During the dictatorship, families couldn’t afford big presents.
“We didn’t have grocery stores like today and only one or two toy stores, so usually it was homemade gifts or small coins. Gifts are better now, more affordable and more available.”
His two sons, aged five and eleven, receive small gifts in the boots they set out for Santa to fill.
“They put out a boot? Not a shoe or a stocking?” I asked.
After some confusion over word usage and translation, Antonio showed me a photo of the “boot”; it’s what we call a Christmas stocking.
His sons don’t write letters to Santa (Pai Natal). “We know about it from movies but it’s not a big tradition,” he said.
And that’s when we got into our dust-up over Santa’s address and nationality.
“Letters go to ‘Santa Claus, North Pole, H0H 0H0, Canada’ because the North Pole is in Canada,” I argued. Even Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has defended Santa’s Canadian citizenship.
But he was adamant that European children believe Santa lives in Laponia (Lapland) in Finland.
“Search for it. It’s the Land of Santa Claus.”
Christmas Eve
Families gather on Christmas Eve, bringing food and many desserts for a meal served usually between 8 and 10 p.m. They eat their cod, followed by turkey or rooster or goat, and then the sweets.
Children put out their footwear for Santa. Then, some families go to the Missa do Galo (Rooster Mass), so called because the rooster announced Jesus’ birth at midnight and the mass normally starts at midnight. The highlight is when everyone lines up to kiss the Baby Jesus, said Teresa.
“It’s very very cold in the mosteiro (monastery church),” she said. “Children don’t want to go because it’s very cold and they really want to open the presents… but there’s also this atmosphere of no rush and it’s Christmas.”
One year, when her cousin was a baby, the women and girls went to mass, leaving the men to babysit. “When we got back to the house, all the men were sleeping on the couches. My cousin was crawling near the fireplace and they were snoring! The women were not very happy.”
Antonio’s family doesn’t attend mass, but they still used to have to wait until midnight to open gifts. “Today, no. You finish dinner and kids start opening gifts.”
After the kids go to bed, parents fill the boots or shoes or stockings with Santa’s gifts for the children to discover in the morning. They also drink the milk and eat the cookies left out for Santa. When Antonio’s son was small, he got scared because he thought people were breaking into their house!
Christmas Day
When kids wake up, they rush to see what Santa has left for them, just like in Canada. Families gather again, trying to visit with the other side of the family to keep things fair. Just like in Canada.
Mostly, people eat leftovers. The traditional dish is roupa velha (which translates as ‘old clothes’), made with the cod, cabbage and eggs from the night before all mixed together with olive oil. Teresa said it tastes even better because the flavours have melded. They also have sandwiches made from the leftover turkey or rooster.
Epiphany, Jan. 6
Between New Year’s Day and Jan. 6, groups of people go from house to house playing instruments and singing the Janeiras songs (January songs). Sounds just like carolling in Britain and North America, although that’s usually before Christmas.
Jan. 6 is Epiphany or King’s Day. Families and close friends gather again for a meal to mark the end of the Christmas season. The dinner isn’t as big as Christmas Eve, but it does feature another bolo rei. The day is not as elaborate as in Spain, when people traditionally open their gifts.
“The Spanish do it like it should be, since the kings (the three wise men) were the ones that came with the gifts,” said Teresa.
Our hybrid plan
We processed all the information and family traditions shared by Antonio and Teresa and came up with a hybrid plan for our first Christmas in Portugal.
On Christmas Eve, we’ll have bacalhau espiritual (baked cod with bechamel sauce) for dinner plus bolo rei for dessert with our neighbour Maxine. Then we’ll all go to Missa do Galo in the cold monastery. When we return, Bill and I will catch the end of the Trinity United Church service in Ottawa (five hours time difference) via Zoom. I’ll fill Bill’s shoes with treats and perhaps Santa will fill my sock.
On Christmas Day, we’ll eat rabanadas with Canadian maple syrup for breakfast, then open our gifts to each other. We’ll enjoy Zoom calls with our kids and the rest of our family gathered at my brother’s home. We’ll eat a small turkey dinner with more bolo rei and then relax with a glass of port.
Unlike Canadians, people here aren’t “dreaming of a white Christmas” because it rarely snows. The one and only ski resort is in the Serra da Estrela mountains. So, I’ve accepted a green Christmas in Portugal. But what I’m really missing is singing Christmas music with my choir. Bill has tried to cheer me up, searching on Spotify for the two songs that always put me in the Natal spirit: “Joy to the World” by Anne Murray and “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas” by Michael Bublé.
Stay tuned to see if our Christmas in Portugal is good. Does cod taste yummy on Christmas Eve? Will we get Covid from kissing Baby Jesus during the Rooster Mass? Will Santa find us in Portugal or will he bypass us since we didn’t send our letters to Laponia?
Feliz Natal!
And a very merry Christmas to you, too! All the best in the coming year.
Enjoyed your article on Christmas traditions both past and present in Portugal. Interesting how things have become more commercialized there as they are here. Will think of you Christmas Eve as we attend the service at Trinity and know you and Bill will be watching from so far away.
Happy Holidays to you both and wishing you good health for 2023 and may you have more and more interesting adventures.
Shirley & Dave
Thanks, Shirley. Although Christmas may be more commercialized here than it used to be, it’s still not as far down that path as in Canada. We’ll be thinking of you and all our other friends at Trinity tomorrow night. We’ll enjoy the music!
Such a wonderful summary of Christmas in Portugal!
Obrigada! I’m happy it rang true for you, since you’re here in Portugal too!
Kathryn, what special writing of traditions, food, celebrations, decorations, memories, and ALL that you are noticing, experiencing, and hybrid planning. LOVE your pictures and videos. You have given us such a gift to see the December holiday season in Portugal through your eyes and ears. The cod would be a leap for many Canadians, me included. But, I would try it once. I look forward to your Part Two! Feliz Natal Kathryn and Bill! (PS A weather “bomb” is unfolding in Eastern Ontario…so enjoy the green warmth.)
Thank you for your kind words, Sandy! Merry Christmas to you and Fred! We are indeed enjoying the warm weather here. I was walking around in the sunshine in a T-shirt this afternoon!! Dec. 23 in a T-shirt! We’re still in awe of this place. We’ve been watching the news and weather reports about the weather at home. Terrible timing for Christmas! I’m afraid it’s going to ruin a lot of plans to get together with family. We’re sorry about that.