What it means
Ask a Valley native what Christmas tastes like and the answer is a tamal: corn masa spread on a soaked husk, wrapped around pork in red chile, tied, steamed and eaten hot with the husk peeled back, usually a dozen at a time. In the weeks before Christmas the phrase “tamales at Christmas” covers a whole economy. Mexican families hold tamaladas, assembly-line parties where mothers, aunts and anyone with hands make ten or twenty dozen in an afternoon. Everyone else places an order, by the dozen, with a kitchen, a church fundraiser or a coworker’s mother, and the good ones sell out before Christmas week. The freezer full of tamales is as much a Valley December marker as string lights on a saguaro.
The custom is Mexican and it came north with the Sonoran families who built the state’s food, the same tradition the Corrals of Los Olivos carried from Cananea. The site’s holiday guide covers the lights and the trains; this page covers the thing in the husk.
Where you’ll meet it
In December, everywhere: on the counters of Mexican groceries in Phoenix, Mesa and Guadalupe, at parish fundraisers, in the office break room when someone’s family made too many, on restaurant menus from Barrio Queen to the neighborhood cantinas, and in the question “did you order your tamales yet,” which locals start asking around Thanksgiving.
Where the word came from
The tamal is older than Christmas by a wide margin. The word comes from the Nahuatl tamalli, and corn-wrapped foods of the kind have been made in Mesoamerica for thousands of years; the English “tamale” is a back-formation from the Spanish singular tamal, which is why a pedant will tell you one tamale is a tamal and the plural is tamales.
The Christmas connection grew with the church calendar. Las Posadas, the nine nights of processions re-enacting Mary and Joseph’s search for lodging, has been celebrated in Mexico from December 16 to 24 since the sixteenth century, and each night ends in a feast. Tamales, which can be made ahead in quantity and steamed for a crowd, became the feast food of the season across Mexico and Central America, and in several countries eating them at midnight on Christmas Eve is the custom. The preparation itself is the ritual: slow, many-handed, and a reason to put a family in one kitchen for a day.
Arizona inherited the whole calendar. Sonoran families in Tucson, Phoenix and the farm towns made tamales for Christmas because their grandmothers had, and the tradition spread outward through neighbors, coworkers and church sales until the dozen-at-Christmas habit belonged to the whole Valley. The red chile pork tamal became the regional standard; green chile with cheese the second; and Arizona’s own green corn tamale, made from fresh sweet corn with cheese and green chile, a summer specialty, found its way into December orders too.
What it is not
A Valley tamal is not the banana-leaf tamal of Oaxaca or the Yucatán, which is larger, softer and wrapped in leaf rather than husk, and it is not the hot tamale of the Mississippi Delta. It is also not a burrito or an enchilada; the masa is the point, and good masa, light and seasoned, is what separates a kitchen worth ordering from.
The fine print
How the season actually runs. Orders open around Thanksgiving. The kitchens and families that locals trust fill their calendars in the first two weeks of December, and by the week before Christmas most have stopped taking orders. Pickup is in the last days before Christmas Eve, when the tamal is eaten, and a second, smaller wave covers New Year’s Eve. Prices are by the dozen and vary with the filling; a mixed dozen, red pork and green chile cheese, is the standard order, with sweet tamales added for the children.
Handling them. Tamales freeze well in their husks and reheat best by steaming for twenty minutes or so; a microwave dries the masa unless you wrap the tamal in a damp towel. Do not eat the husk, which newcomers do once. Sauce is optional and regional; a Sonoran table might set out red chile or nothing at all.
Where to look. Scottsdale’s Mexican restaurants, from the chef rooms to the cantinas in our Mexican restaurant guide, keep tamales on the menu, but the by-the-dozen December trade mostly runs through Mexican groceries, tamale shops and church kitchens in Phoenix, Mesa and Guadalupe, and through families who make extra to sell. The best advice is the oldest: ask a Sonoran coworker where their family orders, or whether they are hosting a tamalada and need hands. The Valley’s Mexican Catholic calendar is visible in Scottsdale at the Día de los Muertos celebration in late October; by December the same community is in the kitchen.
In the Valley “tamale season” is understood without explanation, the way patio season is, and both mark the same cool stretch. A tamal eaten on a 45-degree December night, husk steaming, is the point of living in a desert that gets winter.