Our twist on Christmas was set in Jordan and began with a sleepless night on Christmas Eve in a wind-battered tent – although “tent” was a loose term for the patchy tarpaulins we used for shelter, and a structural collapse occurred at 3am. Despite the mishaps, Christmas morning began in style with a sip of prosecco and a bite of Mum’s homemade Christmas cake for all. Once clad in festive antlers, we set off on a walk through the mountains to the majestic monastery in Petra . Festive greetings from home and an unusual Christmas dinner, consisting of a cucumber, an orange and flatbread, rounded off a brilliant Christmas Day in one of the wonders of the world. Although the Christmas Story took place in Israel, Christmas isn't widely celebrated in the country at all! Only about 2.5% of the population of Israel are Christians. Christmas isn't a public holiday in most of Israel! For most people in Israel, Christmas is a 'normal working day' (unless the 25th December is a
Arriving late by bus, still wearing ski gear, we trundled our cabin bags over the cobbles in search of our rented apartment in the heart of medieval Granada. It was Christmas Eve. Everyone was out: drinking cava, sharing tapas or queuing to see the belénes, the nativity scenes set up in all the plazas. We went to midnight mass in the Cathedral, and on Christmas morning, climbed up to the viewpoint at the Albaicín, the old Moorish quarter. From there, the Alhambra looked sublime against its backdrop of snow-capped peaks, the same mountains we had skied down just the day before.
Christmas crib, or nativity scene. Belén actually means Bethlehem, and while some show just the manger scene, others form elaborate tableaux of the town and its environs. Many families have a ‘belénbox’ that goes back decades, full of lovingly-collected half-broken figurines, lumps of papier-mâché, bits of twig and silver paper, mirrors, corks, seeds and dried grasses; all ingeniously employed to recreate streams and bridges, paths and hills, carpenters’ workshops, fields of wheat and so on. Ironically, this most traditional of Spanish Christmas customs only goes back to the 18th century and was imported from Naples by the first wife of Carlos III.
Sweet things. The Spanish do savory brilliantly: hams, cheeses, olives and all the other salt of the earth stuff. But you’ll also need to find excitement for mantecados and polverones: lardy cakey, biscuity things that glue your mouth together and come in terrifyingly large boxes.Steven, as in Saint Steven’s Day. The 26 December is a bit of a damp squid in most of Spain; there are newspapers, the banks are open, and some unfortunate souls even return to work. In Catalunya and Baleares, though, it is a public holiday and as important as England’s Boxing Day.
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