Filipinos love rice. Fact.
We eat rice for breakfast, lunch, snacks, desserts, and even drink rice beverages. We have numerous words referring to in our language. As any Filipino would tell you, “Rice is life”.
Naturally, this staple makes its way to the Filipino holiday table outshining any other . With roughly 78.8 per cent of the Filipino population Catholics, Christmas is a huge festival in the Philippines. The festivities begin as early as September 1st when display of Christmas decorations commence and carols start playing.
What foods do Filipinos eat during Christmas?
For many Filipinos, is the most iconic . This rice cake is traditionally cooked outside churches on Simbang Gabi, the 9-day novena masses leading up to Christmas. There is a distinct aroma as the rice cakes are cooked in clay pots lined with banana leaves over charcoals.
Made from glutinous rice flour, eggs, coconut milk and sugar, it is topped with salted duck eggs and kesong puti (Filipino white carabao cheese). Once cooked, bibingka is slathered with butter, sprinkled with sugar, and served with freshly grated coconut.
Filipino purple yam cake and sweets in a display at Xmas with fruit Source: iStockphoto / Tonyliz/Getty Images/iStockphoto
Another favourite is , made of glutinous rice, coconut milk and sugar wrapped with leaves. This steamed snack is traditionally eaten at midnight with thick hot Tsokolate (chocolate), and also often given as gifts.
What is the best Filipino food for Christmas?
While Simbang gabi is a core memory for many Filipinos, the feasting truly happens on Noche Buena, or Christmas Eve. It literally translates to night of goodness, but it pertains to the meal enjoyed after midnight mass.
Dishes served on Noche Buena vary from lechon (spit roasted pig) for big parties, to American-inspired baked sugared ham and roast Chicken to Spanish-influenced dishes like paella and cocido.
Credit: Kitti Gould
The history of Filipino Christmas food
According to historian and writer Doreen Fernandez, “Christmas is a feast built on older celebrations – probably, harvest. It is therefore syncretic, acquiring meaning and symbols from pre-Christian observances.
“Thus, a constant that runs through many of these feasts is rice - whole or ground, sticky or otherwise, often sweetened - in the forms of suman, ibus, bibingka, puto bumbong, puto maya, etc, or even arroz caldo and pospas.”
The love for rice runs deep in the Phillipines with a long history of farming, the countryside replete with idyllic scenes of rice fields and water buffaloes tilling the soil. As a symbol of sustenance from the land, rice has come to be associated with prosperity.
“Since rice figures in many of our pre-Christian rituals, and we offer each other rice on the important days of our year’s passage, it is natural that it now features in this most Christian of feasts,” Fernandez says.
The love for rice runs deep in the Phillipines with a long history of farming.
Even when people integrate dishes from, say, Spanish Christmas traditions or American (like roast turkey), you can always expect rice delicacies served at festive feasts.
In the Phillipines, throughout the holiday season, a non-stop flow of visiting relatives and friends is customary. And so, it is essential to have or rice cakes at hand, such as sapin-sapin (rice cakes with different layers), kuchinta, palitaw (flat rice cake with ground coconut, sesame seeds and sugar), (brown sugar, glutinous rice and coconut milk) and puto (steamed rice cake).
Rice cakes on the Filipino table for New Year’s Eve
For most Filipinas, it is very important to have rice cakes on New Year’s Eve. Many believe these sticky rice cakes represent the close bonds of families. Others believe the stickiness is like a magnet for good luck or good fortune.
We Filipinos thrive on superstitions, and for New Year feasts, we believe in filling the dinner table with all things round – usually fruits like oranges, grapes, watermelon, mangosteen. The round shape is symbolic of coins or money. Some people insist on eating 12 fruits. Many rice cakes are also shaped round making them doubly auspicious to ensure good fortune and abundance for the year to come.
How Filipinos in Australia celebrate Christmas
While most Filipinos in Australia won’t have access to the clay pots over coals traditionally used to make bibingka or the bamboo tubes used to make puto bumbong, yet we still find ways to eat our favourite kakanin (rice cakes) - whether , or ordering them from Filipino groceries and restaurants.
Some Catholic churches in Australia offer Simbang gabi, where kakanin is served with ginger tea to the parish community after mass.
But for most Pinoys in Australia, Christmas is a good excuse to come together with the community to feast on favourites like (roast pig), pancit, pork barbecue, lumpia, Pinoy spaghetti, and of course - lots of steamed rice.
