Christmas In the Chinese Way

               

                        Christmas is definitely my favorite time of the year. I love the warm feeling of this season, and I am able to celebrate it with my relatives altogether. What makes this even more special is the delicious home-made food that my amah prepares! (amah= Chinese term for grandmother)

                          It has already been tradition that every Christmas, my amah prepares food for us to feast on. We usually have fruit salad, leche flan, pancit noodles and her famous stuffed chicken that she makes herself. These are just some of the food that we have and these are the food that cannot be absent during our Christmas get-togethers. Once, my amah told me how she prepares the stuffed chicken and she explained it to me in Chinese. “The first step is to take a whole chicken and slice it open in the middle, on its stomach (do not cut the whole thing in half). You must remove all the insides of the chicken and clean it, making sure there is no more blood an all that black stuff inside…” The next thing she does is to make her own stuffing using brown rice with mushrooms and chilis. After she prepares that, she puts the stuffing in the chicken and uses a needle and thread to sew back and close the chicken to its original form. It is then baked in the oven and before you eat it, you cut the thread and remove it from the chicken. My amah makes the best stuffed chicken! It is one of my favorite food to eat during Christmas together with her fruit salad and leche flan.

                            In Chinese tradition, we must also have pancit noodles especially during the New Year because it symbolizes long life, and the stuffed chicken is like the turkey during Thanksgiving Day, it can never be complete without it. Our grandparents also give us “angpao”, which is a small red envelope with money in it. The money in this envelope, as they say, must be saved-up to start a good year. Ever since I was a kid, this is the traditional way that I was brought up to during Christmas and I know that the food of my amah cannot be replaced by anyone or anything else! Family food is definitely irreplaceable.