Holiday Traditions Around the World

This holiday season, more than ever, many will rely on their heritage and traditional customs to bring a sense of peace and continuity. We asked a cross-section of area residents from different ethnic backgrounds how they plan to spend the holidays. While many will be missing loved ones due to travel restrictions and safety precautions, they say the pleasures of familiar foods and rituals from their youth will pull them through.

BY MARCIA BIGGS

Theresa Scott / Italian Throwdown / Feast of the Seven Fishes

For most Italian Americans, Christmas Eve is celebrated as the Feast of the Seven Fishes. It’s the focus of the holiday season, a time for family and friends to gather to celebrate their regional heritage and the riches of the sea. For Theresa Scott (formerly Morelli), though, it’s her annual “Italian Throwdown” on the first Saturday of December that kicks off the holiday season.

This casual and very large gathering of friends and family keeps Theresa busy in the kitchen preparing Italian specialties such as eggplant parmesan, Stromboli, sausage and pepper, Chicken Vesuvius with artichokes, stewed rice balls stuffed with spinach and cheese, an array of cookies, tarts, zeppole, and her famous lemon olive oil cake with fresh rosemary. Just a few weeks later, she’ll be at it again, but this time preparing fish dishes for up to 20 family members for the Feast of the Seven Fishes. For this, she insists it be a properly plated and seated affair.

Planning, prepping, cooking and baking – but it’s all a labor of love. “My family is from Sicily and I am a true Italian cook,” she admits. “I make everything from scratch. It’s how you preserve the old way of doing things. The preparing and serving of food speaks to simple pleasures.”

Despite being mom to 5-year-old twins Noah and Bella and holding down a job as a business strategist, Theresa revels in the customs and traditions of her Catholic Italian heritage, knowing that her

Homemade Italian Cookies

Olive oil rosemary cake

children will be raised to appreciate the family bonds that are such an important part of their ancestry. She and husband Edward cherish the holidays, which put family first.

“We follow all the religious traditions, too, we go to church, sing holiday songs. When we do gift-giving, we remind the children of the notion that the Three Kings brought gifts to Baby Jesus and it’s more about giving than receiving. For us, holidays are a time to be grateful and to celebrate our blessings.”

This year, due to the pandemic, Theresa admits the Italian Throwdown and Feast of the Seven Fishes will be smaller, more intimate gatherings. Still she plans on cooking and baking her heart out with all the traditional foods. “For me, food is love,” she says. “It’s a lot of work, but I do it out of service and out of love for my family. It’s for the joy of seeing everyone sitting around the table together – which we just don’t do anymore.”

Tina Dyer / Chinese New Year

Tina Dyer vividly remembers her Taiwanese mother bringing her and her brothers to the Chinese New Year celebrations every year in downtown Salt Lake City. The colorful dragons dancers, bright lanterns, steaming fried foods, drumming, dancing and fireworks all immersed her in another world. Although they lived in a small Utah town, her mother introduced her children to the Chinese customs and traditions of this most important lunar holiday.

Flash forward to 1995, Dyer was married and living in St. Petersburg with two children. “I started thinking that I wanted my kids to know that side of my life. I hadn’t nurtured the Asian part of our background,” she said. So she began celebrating the Chinese New Year every February in her home to honor her culture and instill the fundamental traditions in her children.

She continues to celebrate the Chinese New Year, but now her family gathering is much larger.

The first tradition of the new year, she said, is to prepare with a thorough house cleaning. “I make sure to do this,” she says. The custom is meant to sweep away ill-fortune and make way for incoming luck. Then the cooking begins – egg rolls, dumplings, a long noodle dish for longevity and a fish dish. Dyer presents a red envelope with money to her children, the red keeps the evil spirits away and the money represents good fortune.

On the day of Chinese New Year, Dyer dresses in traditional Chinese silk and welcomes her grown children and their partners, her partner Scott Kempfhall, and assorted close friends for a festive family dinner. The meal ends with fortune cookies and tea, of course.

In addition to Chinese New Year, Dyer celebrates all the traditional American holidays (she is half American). “It’s pretty busy around my house for a couple months,” she admits. “We do Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s Eve and Chinese New Year.” But she doesn’t seem to mind one bit.

Adeline and Neville Christmas / A French Christmas

Placing slippers beneath the tree is a French Christmas Eve tradition.

Coming to the United States from France to live six years ago would be a transition, Adeline Christmas knew. She and husband Neville landed in Tampa Bay, and soon two children came along. Their French heritage remains strong, and the parents did not want Gabrielle, 5, and Armand, 3, to lose it. They enrolled the young ones in the French American School of Tampa Bay, where they are taught in French, and they continue the cultural traditions of the Christmas season, as well.

Growing up in a small town near Toulouse, Adeline’s family celebrated Christmas as any French family would – gathering on Christmas Eve for a spread heavy in seafood starting with foie gras and a champagne toast followed by oysters, shrimp, snails, and fish and finishing with delectable French pastries and chocolates.

On Christmas Day, they would roast a goose or duck. “Nobody eats turkey in France,” she remarks. Instead of stocking gifts, the French would place a pair of slippers for each person under the Christmas tree “to let Santa know how many people lived in the house.”

This year, with international quarantines, no relatives will be visiting and Adeline admits she will miss her French family, particularly now. Still, she and Neville plan to carry on the French traditions of seafood on Christmas Eve and slippers under a Christmas tree. As far as Thanksgiving, it’s a non-holiday for the Christmas family. “In the United States, people cook big dinners for the holidays, but we are French,” Adeline says. “We cook all the time for no reason at all!”

Natasha Kane / Ukrainian Christmas

Born in Moldova, Ukraine, Natasha Kane’s family was at the center of her life growing up. “Ukrainians are very family-oriented,” she said. “Most families stay in the same region, and holiday customs are very important to keeping traditions going.”

In Eastern Ukraine where she was raised, the Christian Orthodox faith is prevalent and they celebrate Christmas on January 7, said Kane. But Christmas Eve, January 6, is the most important tradition. They fast all day as they wait for the “first star,” at which time the dinner will commence. “The dishes are very important and signify different things,” explains Kane. “We start with the kutya, a holy food made of wheat grains and honey, poppy seeds and walnuts.” It represents the union of the living with their ancestors.

Twelve dishes are served in honor of the 12 apostles with no meat or dairy products. They include sauerkraut, pierogi, baked fish, salads, pilaf and vegetables and fruit. On January 7, the family gathers again for a dinner that includes stuffed duck and kolach bread, a round loaf of bread with a burning candle in the center as the centerpiece. Caroles are sung after dinner, said Kane, and visits are made to godparents, where treats or small gifts are shared.

Kane is grateful her two grown daughters live nearby so she can continue to share Ukrainian Christmas with them, and her husband. They typically don’t do much on December 25, she says.

Carla Bristol / Kwanzaa First Night

When Carla Bristol opened Gallerie 909 in the Deuces area of downtown St. Pete in 2014, with its focus on African American and South American fashion and art, she never realized it was destined to become an important part of the community. And she would play an even bigger part. Her little storefront soon became a gathering spot for St. Petersburg’s black community and that year’s Kwanzaa First Night became a pop-up event that established Bristol as organizer and host ever since.

A non-religious festival that is fairly new, having begun in 1966, Kwanzaa is a celebration of unity that begins with a First Night on December 26 and continues until the evening of December 31. It celebrates the harvest and is a time to come together to give thanks for community and to honor ancestors. There is joyousness in the First Night gathering, with drumming and storytelling. Kwanzaa calls for baskets filled with fruit and vegetables from the fall harvest to be presented upon handcrafted African textiles, along with a Unity Cup and a 7-candle kinara that is lit each night. Each candle represents a different principle of life.

Bristol has since moved Gallerie 909 to The Pavilion on 49th Street South, a space too small for First Night. Last year, it filled the Pinellas Technical College community room, so this year she is moving it to the Dr. Carter G. Woodson African American Museum’s Legacy Garden. She’s getting support from museum and city leaders, and is expecting the largest Kwanzaa First Night crowd ever.

“The First Nights here are actually very diverse,” says Bristol. “There are many ethnic backgrounds and all ages, from elders to small children. This year’s First Night will be in a beautiful backdrop with historic significance.”

Elizabeth Gelman and Tom Sivak/ Hannukah

It will be a quiet Hannukah at home for Elizabeth Gelman and husband Tom Sivak. Their two grown daughters live outside the state, and the pandemic means they won’t be coming to visit this year. Still, Gelman, who is executive director of the Florida Holocaust Museum, plans to light a menorah. “It’s important to me after so many years to continue the tradition, it’s a reminder of who I am,” she says.

She recalled when the children were growing up, teaching them the importance of religious rituals and caring for others. “In the Jewish faith, Hannukah is really a minor holiday,” she explains, “but we always lit the candles, said a blessing, gave small presents.” They would eat latkes and doughnut holes. And they would celebrate Christmas as the Giving Holiday, adopting a family in need and helping them with food and clothing and toys. “We taught the children to find inspiration and love in Christmas, and to help one another.”

In her leadership role at the Holocaust Museum, Gelman has seen the deepest and darkest of sadness and memories. But she still finds hope, even now. “This pandemic is so hard for so many that we start to lose hope,” she says. “To me, Hannukah is a time to remember miracles are possible.”

Anthony Ivers-Read/ A British Christmas

Traditional English Christmas Cake

When their three-week holiday cruise was cancelled due to COVID, Anthony Ivers-Read and Tom Rigg knew they had to rebound. Not to worry. Well-versed in cooking and baking at the holidays, British-born Ivers-Read started planning the Christmas menu. While it might be just the two of them at their Gulfport home, it made no difference. The traditional English feast would commence, albeit a tad smaller.

“In England, most holidays are about the food,” said Ivers-Read, who is retired from the hospitality business but spends lots of time in the kitchen. He grew up around restaurants and learned to cook from his father, who was a chef. “Holidays center around family and food … sausage rolls, mince pie, roasted potatoes and goose.” He fondly recalls the Christmases of his youth when the family festivities would start in earnest on Christmas Eve with plenty of food. There would be Christmas crackers (toys) and party hats and lots of noise. This year will be different in that respect, but he plans to chat with his family virtually on Zoom.

Planning began in earnest in early October, when he started the long process of making a traditional English Christmas Cake. Similar to a heavy fruitcake filled with nuts and currants, it requires the addition of brandy every week over two months. “It’s something my friends expect,” says Ivers-Read. “I cover it in marzipan and it bakes for 4 and half hours.” He’s thinking he might even bake a stuffed goose for Christmas dinner this year, too.