A Chilean Christmas in the USA: pan de pascua, cola de mono and the rest of the table

Last year our first pan de pascua orders arrived in October. Before the first cold snap in Florida, before anyone had bought a turkey, Chileans in the United States were already planning Christmas, and it started with a loaf of spiced cake.

This guide is for them, and for everybody who married into a Chilean family and is about to spend their first Christmas Eve wondering why dinner starts so late. Here is what goes on the table, what it all means, and how to put a Chilean Christmas together from an American kitchen.

First, a word about the word Pascua

If you search for pan de pascua in English, you can find at least one travel site calling it an Easter cake. It is not. Pascua can mean Easter in Spanish, but in Chile it is also the everyday word for Christmas, and that is the sense in the name. Pan de pascua is Christmas bread. The same word gives Chile its name for Santa Claus, the Viejito Pascuero, the little old Christmas man.

That name has a date on it. The story told in Chile is that in 1905 a Santiago toy store put a Santa Claus figure in its window, and the people walking past gave him the nickname that stuck. More than a century later, Chilean children still wait for the Viejito Pascuero rather than Santa Claus, and he arrives at midnight.

Why a Chilean Christmas looks nothing like an American one

Two things explain almost everything. The first is the calendar. Chile is in the southern hemisphere, so Christmas lands in the middle of summer. The second is the clock. The main event is not Christmas morning, it is Nochebuena, Christmas Eve, and the night runs late.

• Dinner on the 24th. The family sits down on the night of December 24. Turkey is the usual centerpiece, roasted in the oven, with salads and papas duquesas, piped and baked mashed potato rounds, on the side.
• Gifts at midnight. The moment the clock passes twelve and it becomes the 25th, the children open what the Viejito Pascuero left. Nobody waits for morning.
• Christmas Day outdoors. Because it is summer, the 25th is for an asado, the long Chilean barbecue, or a day at the beach or the park.
• Cold drinks, not hot ones. December in Santiago is not hot cocoa weather. The drinks on the table are served cold.

So a Chilean Christmas in the United States has a built-in contradiction: the traditions were made for a hot night, and most of us are keeping them in December weather. That is fine. The table travels well, and a few of its pieces taste even better in the cold.

Pan de pascua: the one thing every Chilean Christmas has

Pan de pascua is the non-negotiable. It is a dark, dense, spiced cake, heavy with candied fruit, raisins and nuts, flavored with honey and warm spices, and sliced thin to go with coffee or tea all through December. Chileans buy it, give it as a gift, and keep one in the kitchen for the whole season.

It is called bread, and it is a cake

Pan means bread, and the name is misleading in the best way. Mario Pennacchiotti, who heads the grain and flour laboratory at Universidad Mayor in Santiago, put it bluntly to the university press at Universidad de Santiago: pan de pascua is not bread, it is a queque, a pound cake, in its shape, its recipe and the way it is made.

It started out closer to bread. The tradition arrived with European immigrants, mainly German and Italian, at the end of the nineteenth century and the start of the twentieth, and its ancestors are the German stollen and the Italian panettone. Chile made it its own, denser, moister and more heavily spiced, with local touches like honey and chancaca, and by Pennacchiotti's estimate it was around the 1950s or 60s that it finished turning from a bread into a cake.

Candied fruit or nuts and almonds?

Ours is a 24.69 oz (700 g) loaf, dark and moist, with ginger and honey in the flavor, in two versions. Candied Fruit is the classic, full of the colored pieces that make a slice look like Christmas. Nuts and Almonds swaps the fruit for crunch, and it is the one to buy for the person at the table who picks the candied fruit out.

When to order it

Our own orders tell the story. Pan de pascua orders start well before the holidays, climb through November, peak from Thanksgiving into early December, and have nearly stopped by the week before Christmas. Plenty of people order more than one: one for the house and one to give away.

The lesson is simple. Pan de pascua is a November purchase. If you wait for the week before Christmas, you are waiting with everybody else.

If you would rather bake it

Some families make their own, and the part that makes it taste Chilean is the spice. Esencia Pan de Pascua is a concentrated flavoring made for exactly that, a 60 ml bottle with the cinnamon, nutmeg, clove and dried fruit notes of the real thing. Our baking collection has the rest of the Chilean pantry side of the recipe.

Cola de mono: the Christmas drink

Pan de pascua has a partner, and it is cola de mono, which translates as monkey's tail. It is a cold drink made from milk, coffee, sugar and warm spices such as cinnamon and clove, spiked with aguardiente, a clear grape spirit, or with pisco. Chileans make it by the jug in December and pour it well chilled next to a slice of pan de pascua. It is also sometimes served on New Year's Eve.

Nobody agrees on where the name comes from. The most famous story involves Pedro Montt, president of Chile in the early twentieth century, and a play on his name. Another says it comes from a monkey on the label of an old liquor bottle. Chilean media retell several versions every December, and none of them can be proven, which is part of the fun.

A practical note: we do not ship spirits, and the aguardiente or pisco is the one ingredient you will need to find locally. The coffee, the milk and the spices are easy, and the recipe is forgiving.

The rest of the Chilean Christmas table

Pan de pascua and cola de mono are the fixed points. Around them, a Chilean Christmas is a table of sweets, most of them the same classics Chileans eat all year, bought in larger quantities and put out in bowls.

Chocolate

Chocolate fills the rest of a Chilean Christmas order. Super 8, the small chocolate covered wafer, comes individually wrapped and fills a stocking. A 250 gram Sahne-Nuss, the milk chocolate bar packed with whole almonds, is the bar Chileans give and the bar Chileans hope to get. Trencito is the plain milk chocolate bar for the children, and for the adults who were children with it. For a bowl on the table, Vizzio chocolate covered almonds and Costa Rama chocolate sticks disappear fastest. Our guide to Chilean chocolate, bar by bar goes through the whole shelf.

Candy for the bowl

Suny is Chile's soft caramel candy, the caluga Chileans grow up on. Old England Toffee comes in a bag of individually wrapped toffees in assorted flavors, and Guaguitas, the baby shaped marshmallows, are the ones the children go for. For something with manjar, Chile's milk caramel, the Chocolada Cuchufli is a crisp wafer tube filled with manjar and covered in chocolate, and Chocolate Malva are soft marshmallows under a chocolate coating.

The summer part

Because Christmas in Chile is a summer holiday, the cold desserts and drinks of every Chilean summer are on hand too. Mote con huesillo, dried peaches stewed in a sweet syrup and served cold over cooked wheat, is the most Chilean of them, and our mote con huesillo recipe walks through it. You will need huesillos and chancaca, Chile's dark unrefined cane sugar, for the syrup. For the children's table, a cold Bilz or Pap is the Chilean soda that goes with everything.

Sending a Chilean Christmas to someone else

If you are sending Christmas to someone else, a Chilean parent in another state, a sister who moved away, a friend who has not been home in years, here is what works.

• Lead with pan de pascua. It is the one thing that says Chilean Christmas without explanation. Order it in November.
• Add one real chocolate bar. A 250 gram Sahne-Nuss is the safe choice, the bar Chile is proudest of.
• Add something small and wrapped. A bag of Super 8 or a bag of Suny turns a package into something to share.
• Or let us choose. Our bundles put a Chilean assortment in one box, and our Chilean chocolate collection covers the rest of the sweet side.

Chocolate travels well in December, but it still does not like heat, so if the package is going somewhere warm, our shipping policy explains how we handle chocolate in hot weather.

Keep exploring

Christmas is one date on the Chilean calendar. Our complete guide to Chilean food in the USA covers the whole pantry. Manjar explained properly covers the sweet that turns up in half the things on a Chilean dessert table, and our Fiestas Patrias party guide handles the other great Chilean celebration, in September. For sourcing questions generally, we keep a detailed answer in where can I buy Chilean products in the USA.

And if this is your first Chilean Christmas: one pan de pascua, one Sahne-Nuss, a jug of cola de mono, and dinner late on the 24th. Feliz Navidad.

Looking for a Chilean Christmas classic we do not carry?

Tell us which one. We are Chilean, we know exactly what your family puts on the table, and we answer these ourselves.