Memories of Christmas in Spain
To my Grandchildren
Tió de Nadal / Christmas Log
I was born in 1936 and I grew up in a town by the name Sabadell, near Barcelona, Spain.
Christmas was a religious holiday which was celebrated with joy. My family was poor and money was always and issue, but my parents did their best to make Christmas an out of the ordinary day to celebrate the birth of Jesus.
Sorry to say, some Christmas we had to wait to receive the payment from my father’s clients to be able to go and buy what we needed for the meal, but when one is young does not worry. One assumes that your parents will solve the problem. Mine they always did.
In my childhood days, nobody had a Christmas tree, we had a Tió de Nadal, a round log that we bought or we cut it from the woods, and we painted a smiley face and put a red “barretina* catalane”. Then, either on Christmas Day or Christmas Eve, the children bit the log and sang songs to get some candy from the log! The song that I remember is in Catalan: Tió,Tió, donem torró pel naixement del Nostre Senyor. (Tió give us turrón ** to celebrate Baby Jesus’ birth.”)
Armonia Eddy, (Grandma Eddy)
(*) A barretina is a traditional hat that was frequently worn by men in parts of the Christian cultures of the Mediterranean sea such as Catalonia, the Valencian Community, the Balearic Islands, Provence, Corsica, Sicily, Sardinia, part of Naples, part of the Balkans and parts of Portugal.
(**) Turrón is a Spanish Christmas sweet