We have spent a couple of Christmases in Jerez de la Frontera which is the home of sherry. At one stage we thought that a move to Spain might be on the cards rather than the Bahamas or as a stop gap on the way. Although the Bahamas is now our priority there are loads of things that we still love about Spain especially around Christmas.
As we are looking at ways to inject some magic back into Christmas by looking at traditions around the world, Spain is an ideal place to look at next as we started with France.
Spain in general takes the festive season very seriously and Andalusia is no exception. So, you don’t only have to take my word for it I’ve found this blog about Christmas in Jerez which will put someone else’s perspective on things. You can read their thoughts here.
We stayed right in the middle of Jerez. One of the entrances to our apartment complex being straight off Calle Larga, the main shopping street in Jerez. If you read the above blog then we stayed above/in the Los Cisnes Centre. So, all of the “main” tourist sites were within a five-minute walk or 10 minute amble depending on whether you are going shopping or just doing a Spanish promenade.
Our first experience of Christmas in Jerez
The first year we went to Jerez for Christmas we arrived mid-morning on the 24th December. We were both sick as a parrot and exhausted from our 20hr drive with two dogs and two cats in the car. We managed to crawl around the local supermarket to buy some last-minute perishable bits and pieces then went to the apartment. The idea was to get everything out of the car as quickly as possible and then collapse for several hours to recover. Unfortunately, Jerez had other ideas.
As with a lot of Europe Christmas Eve is the main event for socialising. The restaurants are heaving from lunchtime onwards as family and friends gather to celebrate. Indeed, it is standing room only around most eateries and bars as it appears that all of Jerez are it the centre of the city.
And our apartment was in the city centre. So, our hours of quite snoozing, nursing our colds in the hope of feeling better for Christmas Day had to be put on hold. Thus a quick bit of Christmas decorating was called for. We had found the box with a 4 ft Christmas tree in the barn to take down with us to decorate the apartment. Unfortunately, we hadn’t checked the tree so on construction found that we only had the middle third.
Jerez was PARTYING!
Partying in Jerez is a VERY noisy affair.
The party mood also goes on until about 4am
So much for the not such a brilliant start to inauguration into Christmas Spanish style
Andalusian snow at Christmas
As I said before we stayed at Los Cisnes (the Swans) and the event of the snow that is described in the indietravel article happens every day (see link to the blog above). For days we couldn’t understand why the shopping centre started to get busy at exactly the same time each day. Even more confusing was the horrendous music, which was always the same. Day in and day out. No time off for good behaviour. The music that signals the arrival of the snow is canned Christmas music at its worst. It was days before we found out that, in Los Cisnes at least, it snows every day at Christmas. We might have realised sooner if we’d seen more of the little white “snowflakes”: however, they have some awesome hoovers to clear up afterwards.
Grapes at Christmas
The tradition of eating 12 grapes on each of the strikes of 12 on New Year’s eve/day is a great one. The grapes represent each month of the year and will bring you good luck. I will offer a little advice on the subject. Firstly, get seedless grapes (I Know that’s against the rules). Secondly find a clock that chimes slowly. Unfortunately, when we joined in this celebration the main Cathedral Clock was undergoing some work, so we congregated outside the “City Hall”. This clock chimed extremely quickly so trying to eat the 12 grapes resulted in a lot of Hammy Hamster cheeks and great hilarity.
Red Christmas undies
One thing that we found strange, because we didn’t understand the significance, is that every clothes shop window had Red underwear in them. Now I know we are not that up to date with fashion, so we thought Red must be in colour for underwear that season. It wasn’t, well it was in that at Christmas it is always red underwear as that’s the tradition. The story goes that if you want to find love the following year you have to have new red underwear for New Year. There are of course variations on whether they should be a present (or not) and if you should have given them away by daylight on New Year’s Day.
Christmas processions
There are lots of processions over the festive period. We managed to catch one of them on video. The first video is of us just following the noise we’d heard ABOVE the sound of Bruce Willis saving the day in Die Hard 1,2 or 3. We heard the noise over the film. As the noise was getting closer, we decided to go out and see what the fuss was about.
At the front of the procession was a huge silver “adornment”. I am sure there is a technical name for the religious artefact: however, I’m not sure what it is so “adornment” will have to do. We eventually managed to edge our way forward through the crowd and get ahead of the procession. It was then that we could see the feet moving under the front. The adornment was being carried by about 20 men. They stop quite frequently to allow for rests and crew changes etc … We had never seen anything like it before. Although we did get very used to it over our three months stay. One of the things that amazed us most was that there was no noticeable crowd control. There were hundreds of people following the procession. Everyone was mingling around the adornment. It was obviously of very important religious significance and incredibly valuable. Yet we could have walked up to it and touched it if we’d wanted to. Yet no one ever did, because of the respect that everyone had.
A Christmas of good cheer
As you would expect there are some major differences in what people drink in the Heart of Sherry country. Obviously, a favourite is sherry. In Spain not only is it drunk as an aperitif, it’s drunk like wine, before, during and after a meal. Inf act is can be drunk with or without food. Now I know that, certainly in the UK, a fair amount of sherry is drunk over the Christmas period but the difference in Jerez is the types of sherry. Incidentally grandma’s favourite tipple, Bristol Cream, is totally unavailable here. It may be produced in Jerez and Harvey’s may have a huge Bodega in Jerez, yet it is only for the British market so you can’t buy it here.
So, what is bought instead?
PX (Pedro Ximenez) is drunk in quantity and all the major producers make their own versions. How best to describe PX? Although not a direct comparison, think of French Brandies and how they have the XO/XO Special to grade their better versions well PX is similar designation.
The variety of sherries and associated wines is truly something to behold. However, and a degustation trip to Jerez is easier than a wine tour of French wine regions as it is almost in one place. To be classified as sherry the grapes MUST have been grown in what’s called the Sherry Triangle. The points of the triangle being Jerez, Sanlúcar de Barrameda and El Puerto de Santa María.
I’m not going to go into the food as there are so many fabulous dishes that this would result in a book not a blog. The only thing I will say is that we were temporarily disappointed with the cheese. There is only so much manchego you can get excited about when you have the huge array of cheese available in France as your “standard”. Luckily rescue appeared, Ironically in the form of our favourite French cheese being on offer in the local supermarket so we bought quite a lot.
Be kind to yourself …
In CANBACE friendship!
If anything I have written resonates I’d love to hear from you in the comments. I appreciate that this can be a difficult subject to speak openly about. If you don’t want me to publish your comment on the website, please let me know. I will keep your words private.
Leave a Reply