Location: 2nd floor of Jones Building. Bring your apron and hats!

Christmas Tamalada is a community gathering to make tamales. This is an event for all ages. We come together to sit or stand around the table and form assembly lines to spread the masa on the corn husk, put the filling, fold the corn husks, and then steam the tamale. We provide all the masa, fillings, and husks. It is an amazing opportunity to connect with people in the community, to learn about the ways people make tamales in different cultures and to practice other languages.

It is in preparing of the tamales, the aroma, texture, the conversations, the listening, the learning, laughter, tears, hours of laboring together around the table that we remember what God is doing among us and prepare to celebrate Christmas (the birth of Jesus - Emmanuel- God with us).

Tamales are part of the Mexican Christmas tradition of Las Posadas which commemorates the journey of Mary and Joseph from Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, searching for inn (shelter). The scripture tell us that while they were there, Mary gave birth to Jesus (Emmanuel – God with us) and wrapped him in bands and cloth, and laid him in a manager, because there was no place for them in the inn.