Sign up for TPR Today, Texas Public Radio's newsletter that brings our top stories to your inbox each morning.
Across holiday party tables there are tamales — masa or corn-dough pockets, filled with cooked pork or beans or even chicken, wrapped in corn husks.
More importantly, each tamal is filled with stories. That’s because they’re made during family celebrations known as tamaladas — a party where you can get wrist-deep in generational traditions.
In a North Side San Antonio kitchen, Anna Fossum grabs a bottle of champagne. With the pop of the cork, it’s time to make some tamales.
"It’s the official start,” she said to her primas and tías, (or cousins and aunts.)
You can think of a tamalada as a labor-intensive party. This is a tradition for Hispanic families in which everyone is put to work.
“I feel like it's a reunion and it's a reconnection with my family history,” said Anna.
She said she experienced tamaladas organized by her mother when she was younger. Her mom died in 2008, and her grandmother died during COVID. She said the tamalada is about reconnecting with loved ones from all branches of the family tree.
"That's what the tamalada means to me. Yes, we're making tamales, but we're also making new memories,” Anna added.
The group convened for this gathering in the kitchen of Anna’s cousin, Jessica Brunatti. Their grandmothers were sisters.
The goal on this December Saturday morning was to make 27 dozen tamales. That sounds like a lot, but they've made more than that in the past.
“Oh, I don't know. ... We hadn't counted … 50 dozen,” Anna estimated.
Jessica’s mother, Lydia Cedillo chimed in.
“50 [dozen] was the most that we've made at one time, and we were dying.”
There are four generations of the Riojas family here.
Among them are Lydia’s sisters, Irma and Sylvia, and their mother — 85-year-old Mary Alice Garcia.
Irma and Mary Alice are wrist-deep in cooked, shredded pork when suddenly the doorbell rings.
It’s Jessica’s daughter Bella who just drove in from Austin. She’s recently married and arrives with husband Cooper Young in tow.
“Cooper is from Indiana. He’s new to the traditions,” Jessica said.
Bella wants to pass down this tradition to her future children.
“I feel like it's very important for me to learn these things because my great grandma, she's not getting any younger, and she has all these stories and these memories that I don't really get to hear other than around this time,” Bella said.
This is an all-hands-on-deck process. They’re wearing Christmas aprons and buttons that say "Las Tamaleras," or the tamal makers.
Music rings through the house — from Christmas carols to iconic Mexican classics like "La Chona," made famous by the norteño band, Los Tucanes de Tijuana. Fun fact: "Chona" was the nickname of Mary Alice’s mother.
The tamalada is a carefully choreographed operation. The family sits around a large table in the living room with each person spreading the prepared masa onto corn husks, then stuffing them with refried beans or shredded, cooked pork that is the deep red color of chili.
There’s one more ingredient: shared family stories.
It turns out there's a secret in Mary Alice’s hand. It’s the silver spoon that belonged to her mother. It's even inscribed with her mom’s name.
She demonstrates the ease of using it to Anna.
“You can just go ahead and spread it,” Mary Alice said.
“Look! It does spread easily,” Anna replied.
Mary Alice, the matriarch of this family, was born in Lockhart, Texas in 1940. She said that for her family, tamal-making goes back much further than that.
“My mother was saying ... that it came as a tradition from way back from her mother. They were from the Valley, from the Rio Grande,” she said.
The fact that the tamalada happens around Christmas is by design — to get the family together and pass on this tradition.
“If I leave this world, they can just go ahead and continue, because I know that they already had that in them of being together, keeping the family together, and that's more, I'd say, more important to me.”
As the first 80 or so tamales are stuffed and wrapped, they’re put into a big steaming pot.
This first batch is done about two hours later. The first taste-test is delicious. It's full of their hard work and decades of tradition.
Now there are only about twenty dozen to go.
TPR intern Ivanna Bass Caldera contributed to the production of this story.
