Season of Traditions

Every family, every town or region, and sometimes an entire culture has its own holiday traditions that run like a river through the years and generations—always the same, always slightly different. It may be the savory aroma of a favorite dish, time-honored prayers or songs, visits from loved ones, or a simple ritual used to help mark the season. These traditions make the holiday uniquely our own, one year to the next. Here are some of our favorites.

Walking in Mary and Joseph’s Shoes

A uniquely Southwest celebration has occurred in Emilio and Juanita Angel’s Las Cruces, N.M., home for 32 years. They always host a posada (meaning inn, or lodging, in Spanish).

This widespread, deeply religious, scripted event begins nine days before Christmas and continues each evening when groups of people singing hymns and praying go to a different house each night, re-enacting Mary and Joseph’s search for a place to stay.

“At each house, we ask for lodging and for them to let us in, but they reject us,” Emilio Angel says. “We keep asking, and finally, they give in.”

Every evening the processions end at a different house, where friends and relatives gather to listen to a passage from the Gospel, pray, and sing. On Christmas Eve, the last procession ends at a church, which opens its doors and celebrates the midnight Mass.

The journey from house to house is lighted by a beautiful glow from luminarias, which traditionally consist of small paper bags containing sand (to anchor the bag) and a candle.

“They light the path from one house to another,” Emilio Angel explains. The effect created when luminarias are placed side by side in entire neighborhoods is awe-inspiring, he says.

“We’ve had people from Panama, Central America, and Europe,” he says, “and they’ve never seen anything like it.”

Kwanzaa Fruits

Established in 1966, the seven-day celebration of “first fruits” called Kwanzaa is becoming increasingly popular among African Americans. For Pamelia Hargrove, who enjoys returning to her father’s home in Columbia, Tenn., for the holidays, December means celebrating both Christmas and Kwanzaa. “We decorate two trees—one traditional and one African American,” she says.

The latter is covered with wooden animals found in Africa, colorful cloth, wooden beads, and small wooden faces that resemble African masks. “And angels,” she adds with emphasis. “We always have angels on both trees.”

On the evening when they sit together to remember their family, they enjoy pineapple tea, using a recipe that her great-aunt prepared for all special occasions.

Other Kwanzaa traditions among African American families include lighting a seven-unit candleholder called a kinara that commemorates the seven guiding principles such as unity, purpose, cooperative economics, and self-determination; drinking from a unity cup; and prayers.

Ornaments Through the Years

When Sally Jenkins of West Bend, Wis., decorated her first Christmas tree in her own apartment last year, she was awash with memories. Since her birth 21 years ago, her mother, Amy Jenkins of Wauwatosa, Wis., has added one ornament each year that is somehow reflective of her daughter’s life.

“When my daughter was young, the ornaments were based on my tastes. As she got older, I would base them on her tastes—so in addition to a beautiful nativity glass crystal ball, she had the Power Ranger that spits,” laughs Sally. Other decorations include a Monopoly ornament, a Disney Pluto toy, and an angel with a flute. Perhaps most meaningful is a white iridescent angel. “It was her very first ornament. It’s one of two that I had on my tree when I first married,” she says.

Hanukkah

Doug Schwarz of Penacook, N.H., remembers well the little booklet that his father used to guide their family in Hanukkah reflections. It became an after-dinner tradition to listen as his dad read selected passages and steered conversations regarding such virtues as faith, freedom, courage, love, and charity.

When the booklet was destroyed by fire in 1985, his family members tried to reconstruct the text from memory but never were successful.

Quietly, his father kept searching for another copy, and during a visit in the summer of 1998, he presented Doug with a manila envelope. “You’re not going to believe what’s inside,” he recalls his father saying. “As soon as I opened it, I knew immediately what it was,” Doug remembers. His father had found a copy of the out-of-print booklet in New York City and presented it to his son.

Published in 1952 with the hope that it would “encourage other Jewish laymen to Jewish religious creativity,” the work accomplished its purpose in the Schwarz family, and continues to do so. Reading the yellowed pages brought back memories of rich conversations of childhood, and Doug has passed the booklet along to his married brother so the conversations can continue with his nieces.

Daily Gifts

For years, Christmas also started early for Sandra Johnson of Bloomington, Iowa. Because her retail job required her to work long hours in December, she found it difficult to visit her elderly mother who spent much of her time alone. Determined to remind her mother that she indeed was special, Sandra devised a plan meant to bring simple joy throughout the month.

“On Dec. 1, I would deliver a large box of differently and gaily wrapped gifts numbered one through 25, with an extra one for her Dec. 16th birthday,” Sandra recalls.

Each day, her mother anxiously anticipated opening the gift which corresponded with the date. Although the presents were simple items such as postage stamps, stationery, and snacks, “the happiness they brought to my mother was priceless,” Sandra remembers.

Community Christmas Tree

Between Grand Junction and Delta, Colo., next to Highway 50 stands a Christmas tradition enjoyed by many over the years—though nobody’s certain who started it or keeps it going.

Beginning around Thanksgiving and continuing through New Year’s, an unofficial “community project” takes place as passersby decorate an evergreen tree on the side of the road. This particular tree is unique in being about the only one in sight on this high desert where little grows but sagebrush.

Edith Jardon, 80, and Evelyn Burkenbine, 81, with help from their husbands, decorated the tree for several years from the 1970s to the early 1980s. They don’t remember exactly when they started or stopped decorating the tree. Others joined in as well.

Edith, of Delta, and Evelyn, of Grand Junction, became involved on a whim. “We went to Grand Junction … and we saw some Christmas decorations and came back and decorated the tree. And we did it every year,” Edith says. A Sunday school class decorated it on occasion before they got involved, they believe.

Anyone was welcome to participate, and did, leaving ornaments on the tree’s branches. “It was just here and there,” Edith says. “We tried to make it pretty.” One year, a milk truck driver stopped every night to replace a battery that powered lights on the tree, she says.

Age, cold weather, and the death of Evelyn’s husband forced the women to leave the decorating to others, which included a Boy Scout troop for a few years.

The original tree died after too many droughts and being hit in wrecks but quickly was replaced and continues to be decorated every holiday season by anonymous people passing along Highway 50 this time of year.

Freelance writer Michael Nolan is the son of a well-seasoned mall-based Santa.

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