CHRISTMAS won’t be complete without the traditional Noche Buena celebration.
Held every December 24, Noche Buena has been an important part of the Yuletide season, especially for Filipinos, as this is where families and friends spend time together while enjoying a wide selection of delicious foods and drinks.
Among the Noche Buena staples in a Filipino household are Christmas ham, Quezo de Bola, Pinoy spaghetti, fruit salad, leche flan, and the crowd favorite—lumpiang shanghai.
While it’s nice to have the usual menu this Christmas eve, Filipinos couldn’t help but scratch their heads upon seeing the rising prices of Noche Buena items in groceries and markets.
Perhaps, the question now is, how can you hold a festive Noche Buena celebration without burning a hole in your pocket? Here’s a list of options:
Hold a potluck party
Potluck is one of the best ways to throw a festive yet budget-friendly party because you don’t need to prepare all the food on the table. In potluck parties, each guest would bring food, often homemade, that they would like to share with everyone else at the party.
But young individuals have added some twists to their potluck parties.
On TikTok, they were seen bringing food that starts with the first letter of their names. It could be a dish or dessert that they either prepared themselves or bought from the stores.
Have a boodle fight
A person usually runs out of energy when they engage in a fight — well, a bad fight. But the kind of “fight” we’re talking about is something that will replenish one’s hunger and thirst, and that is the boodle fight.
Boodle fight uses the Filipino traditional “kamayan” style where people eat using only their clean, bare hands. The food, often dry or grilled dishes, is often placed on large banana leaves spread on a long table.
Filipinos usually serve a variety of dishes like seafood, meat such as barbecue and chicken thighs, hotdog, green mangoes and bagoong, dipping sauces like the combination of soy sauce, onion, calamansi and chili, and rice. You can customize the menu to your budget.
Once these are served on the table, you only need to hear the go signal before engaging yourself in this stomach-filling fight.
Picnic-style Noche Buena
For a more intimate Christmas eve, you may opt to gather your loved ones in a picnic-style Noche Buena celebration.
Picnic platters aren’t that expensive and don’t require a lot of time to prepare. Like in boodle fight, picnic food can include marinated grilled meat like liempo, chicken inasal or pork barbecue, and seafood like grilled tilapia or bangus.
For snacks, you can buy chips or packed chocolates from the grocery or market or local delicacies like kakanin or sticky rice.
Aside from these easy-to-prepare food, you only have to bring an extra-large picnic blanket where you can all sit down and place your meals, and other picnic essentials like square pillows for a more comfortable Christmas eve celebration.
Get fast-food delivery
During Christmas, some Filipinos couldn’t help but to be away from their loved ones, perhaps, due to their jobs or studies.
Some of them, however, still try to celebrate Noche Buena in their own little way such as preparing only small portions of dishes. But others don’t have much time to cook their meals, so this is where fast-food delivery comes in to help these individuals celebrate.
With the advanced technology, you only need a few clicks on your mobile phone to get the food you want for your own version of Noche Buena.
Many fast-food chains or restaurants offer good Christmas bundles to customers for discounted prices. With this, you may not only save your time but also your food budget for Christmas eve.
Dine out with loved ones
Several Filipino families have veered away from the traditional Noche Buena celebration.
Probably because of their busy schedules, they just don’t have the time to shop for their Noche Buena items and choose to save their energy to rest—and that’s okay.
If this is your case, you can bring your family members to a restaurant on Christmas eve while enjoying the scenery that the place offers. Maybe you just need to book a reservation as early as now and a list of food that you wish to be served to your table on December 24.
More than the meals, what’s important about the Noche Buena celebrations is the quality time we’ll be spending with our families and friends in this most joyous period, after all the gatherings we’ve missed due to our jampacked schedules.
We hope that you’ll have a lovely Yuletide season this 2023!
