venezuelan ham bread: feliz navidad

Growing up in a tropical country during the winter holiday season had its apparent disadvantages for a young child.
Snow, for one, was a misnomer reserved for the obscure North where Santa and many flush-faced giddy elves allegedly worked under a flurry of coveted snowflakes.
The foliage didn’t help set the mood either:
not a pine tree in sight, in fact, my family’s backyard alone was cluttered with trees adorned with sun-drenched fruits like limes, mangoes, and bananas.

Then you had to fight your way through the hummingbirds, lizards, parrots, guacamayas and, of course, Murtle The Turtle, our tenured pet who inconveniently preferred strategically treacherous spots, such as the walkway, to sunbathe its crusty head.
None of this was shouting ho-ho-ho, if you know what I mean.
Still, the benefits of a December spent 8 degrees north of the equator seemed to far outweigh the desperate longings for a Nordic Christmas.
Top on the list was the annual Holiday Commercial, a much-anticipated event where all the local soap opera celebrities crooned about peace and love and the Holy Spirit in a 7-minute spot played incessantly on television during the month of December. Hanukkah never quite made it to the predominantly Catholic airwaves.
Anticipation for this event would commence as early as October, when viewers would begin to wonder what spin the holiday commercial would have.
When December would arrive, everyone (and I mean everyone) gathered and watched as the telenovela icons (who enjoy Supreme Being status in Venezuela) would shed their nightly bouts of runny mascara, lost fortunes and forlorn love and gather in one big happy circle of love and holiday spirit singing about the joys of Baby Jesus and the prosperity promised for the coming New Year.
An impressive imported tree that would make Rockefeller’s look like a key chain ornament, sparkled in the background and big chunky pieces of foam rained down on the celeb fest in attempts to transform the humid climate into one of winter.
I admit I was a telenovela junkie from the early age of about seven.
While my American contemporaries basked in the morally correct episodes of “The Brady Bunch” and “Gilligan’s Island”, I nourished my distorted sense of reality with scandalous classics such as “Crystal” and “Topacio.” I followed all the trials and tribulations of each and every character, knew who was the real sister, who stole whose fortune, and what the hospitalized mummy with the lustrous blonde hair was muttering through her gauze when no one else could understand.
So, to say I was obsessed with these Christmas commercials is really putting it mildly.
Food was often tied in to these lovefests.
After the camera tired of trying to make Eduardo Serrano appear tall or hide Hilda Carrero’s double chin, it would span out to a glorious table loaded with Venezuelan Christmas goodies.
Each dish looked more delicious than the next, from the pineapple-glazed Christmas ham to the steaming Hallaca, a traditional tamale-like specialty wrapped in plantain leaves and stuffed with pork, chicken, capers and raisins.
Displayed up front would be a golden loaf of pan de jamon:
another indispensible item for a Venezuelan Christmas.
As a child I could never eat just one piece of pan de jamon.
The combination of warm sweet dough wrapped with salty ham, briny olives and juicy raisins almost forced me to keep eating, always leaving me happy and very full.
And as much as I adored my soap opera idols, I remember feeling envious of them; not particularly for the honorary role of shedding good cheer to all the Channel 4 viewers, but because of the amazing spread that I believed awaited them after each performance.
I imagined them finishing their carol, brushing off the snowflakes, and devouring all the delights on the table and all the while I’d be trapped watching The “Flinstones”, awaiting their return.
When the Holiday Commercial did finally return, I’d perk up and prep my voice to sing along, catch each excruciating detail of all my favorite and familiar celebrities, and double check the food table to make sure everything was still there.