Gala gives gifts of Latino culture for Christmas

Every year people talk about rescuing Christmas from the commercial juggernaut it's become, and every year -- for 17 years running -- El Jolgorio Navideño does something about it.

Tonight, Boston's largest annual Latino Christmas gala will be held in a new, larger venue, the Boston Convention Center, to accommodate growing interest in art, music, and food that celebrates traditional cultural values and holiday rituals. The event benefits three literacy and culture programs: Hispanic Writers in the Schools, the Puerto Rican Cuatro Project, and the Celebrating the Puerto Rican Décima initiative, a partnership with Wheelock College and the Berklee College of Music.

"In Puerto Rico the Christmas tradition stretches from late November into January , with tons of family events centered around church nativities," says David Morales, one of the event's organizers. "People used to literally bring gifts of song. Those things had been lost, and this was started not just to gather people but to raise money to help the community."

"Jolgorio" literally translates as fun; Boston's version began at the home of event founder Jaime Rodriguez, a Puerto Rican who had moved here to attend Harvard University in 1973. Thirty people attended that first Christmas party; more than 3,000 are expected to feast on Puerto Rican cuisine and dance to the sounds of plena and bomba music at the Convention Center tonight. Many of the musicians scheduled to perform are traveling here from Puerto Rico, but one of them, Miguel Gonzales, will commute from Springfield, where he moved 40 years ago from Puerto Rico.

Gonzales, 62, is a leading practitioner of the improvised décima , a type of sung poetry with a complicated rhyme scheme and rigorous rules.

"You give me a story and I can make it on the spot. God gave me that," says Gonzales. "At El Jolgorio Navideño I will sing about the country in Puerto Rico. The way people live."

Other musical performers include Los Pleneros de la 21 and folk singers Luz Celenia Tirado and Lenny Jeannette Adorno . Traditional Puerto Rican Christmas cuisine will be served between 8 and 9 p.m.: arroz con gandules (rice and pigeon peas) and pernil (roast pork). It's first-come, first-served, so if you're hungry show up early. Tropical drinks will, of course, be in abundance. Morales is especially excited about the folk art exhibition that's new to this year's festivities.

"People used to venerate wooden saints and now that's one of Puerto Rico's unique folk arts," says Morales. "We'll also have a display of masks, amazing gourd art, and traditional musical instruments."

Mayor Thomas Menino, Senate President Robert Travaglini , and House Speaker Salvatore DiMasi are cochairmen of this year's gala.