Much of the Christmas holiday is about traditions, and for some, there's a food tradition that dates back centuries: tamales.
One store in the South Bay where the tradition is worth the wait is the Tamale Factory. Every year, people line up in the early hours of Christmas Eve to wait in the annual tamale line.
"It seems pretty busy. Everyone wants their tamales," customer Larry McNary says.
The ladies at the tamale factory in East San Jose cook tamales round the clock in the days leading up to Christmas Eve. Pork, beef, chicken, cheese, sweet.
And people come for them.
"I think it's because they use manteca (lard) in there," customer Raul Navarete says. "And they’re just good."
Local
The Tamale Factory plans to sell as many as 10,000 tamales on Tuesday, 7,000 already sold as pre-orders.
"We’ve been here 28 years on Dec. 12," owner Claudia Lopez says. "I’ve been doing this for a long time. All my kids have grown up in here."
Get a weekly recap of the latest San Francisco Bay Area housing news. >Sign up for NBC Bay Area’s Housing Deconstructed newsletter.
Tamales date back to pre-Columbian times. Cornmeal stuffed with a food item and covered in a corn husk before they’re steamed. Families would make them and pack them for their Aztec warriors to eat on the way to war.
Since then, the family tradition has only grown.
"A lot of traditions with my grandparents and aunts and uncles making them together," customer Stephanie Graves says. "Unfortunately, a lot of our relatives have passed on that carried that tradition. But we get to keep living it at the Tamale Factory."
Navarete adds: "For me, growing up, my grandparents would make tamales on Christmas Eve. The oldest son was born on Christmas Eve, so that was the tradition."
It's a tradition McNary adopted.
"I don’t know, I was born on the border," he says. "We had tamales for Christmas, so it's time."
When they get home, they'll unwrap their tamales, share a laugh with family and pass on the Christmas tradition to the next generation.
