The main part of a traditional Christmas meal for Venezuelans is the hallaca. It is a meal in and of itself in that it is made with vegetables and meat (inside a cornmeal "blanket") and boiled in banana leaves. The process is complicated and takes a full day to prepare. Saturday I joined some friends from my Spanish church in the preparation.  The theory is to spend one day in early December cooking them (we made 149) and then spend the rest of the month eating them.  This gives mom a break from cooking. In our case we are going to have them during our Christmas party.