In New York, you've got the big tree at the Rockefeller Center looming over the ice rink. In the small town where I grew up in the mountains of Virginia, there is a parade the whole town comes out for.

And in Arizona, you've got tamales.

The Mexican dish is a staple of Christmas time in our border state. But how did they become so connected to the holidays and why do they matter so much?

This week on Valley 101, a podcast by The Arizona Republic and azcentral.com, I talked to a couple of people who know their tamales. One is Brenda Mercado Valdez, the owner of Fire and Braids and the winner of the La Voz Top Tamale contest. The other is Paula Soria, the La Voz reporter who wrote about the contest — and who, like Brenda, has a family history with tamales.

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