Treasured Traditions

Palisadian-Post Interns Shared How They Celebrate the Holiday Season in the Palisades and Beyond

In the midst of the holiday season, the Palisadian-Post asked its interns how they celebrate. From Vasilopita to cooking, baking and annual trips to Florida, this young group of writers gives readers a glimpse into their family traditions.

Sofi Fischer

Thanksgiving is the comfiest, coziest, most pumpkin spice-filled holiday of them all. It’s the epitome of fall. The one day where long-lost relatives reunite at the dining room table to stuff their faces and catch up on the latest family gossip.

In the Fischer household, each member takes on their desired role: My father is the pie-baker, my mother is the turkey-maker, my twin sisters battle it out between the stuffing and string beans, and I make my blueberry crumble. Although my dish isn’t the most festive, my 7-year-old sister Mia said that it is by far the favorite of the group, and I take her word for it.

The night before Thanksgiving is madness. All six of us cooking in our kitchen, emptying out the whole fridge for ingredients and tripping over one another as my dad plays music on the living room speaker at maximum volume—meanwhile my mom yells at him to turn it down. This is our Thanksgiving every year.

This year, I expected—and secretly wished for—nothing different. Madness, which somehow manifests into a unique kind of nostalgia, is the Fischer family tradition.

The morning of our Thanksgiving dinner, my grandma arrives before the rest of the family to decorate the dining room table in flower arrangements and to de-stress my panicking mother whose pre-Thanksgiving panic attack has just set in, fearing that there isn’t enough food to feed nine hungry cousins, grandparents, aunts and uncles.

When the nine hungry Fischers finally arrive, my mom has reached the final stage of acceptance and prepares her camera to take an infinite amount of family photos. My dad turns on football as adults mingle in the living room, the younger kids play outside, and my sisters and I escape to my bedroom to eat cheese and crackers while watching old Disney Channel movies. The night comes to an unanticipated end only after all the food—including my blueberry crumble—has vanished from the dining room table, leaving each family member in an unshakable food coma.

Every year, my family and I create new memories through honoring the old. No matter how much has changed, Thanksgiving will always be there for me to return to the people that I am lucky enough to call my family.

For that, I am eternally thankful.

Karina Eid

While the specific details of every holiday plan vary from year to year, the few constants for me are family, food, charity and decorations.

From a young age, family has encapsulated the holiday season—Thanksgiving through New Years. Despite living in various states, my large extended family all bands together for these annual festivities. When we are not catching up on each others’ lives, we often spend time nurturing our sweet tooths—whether baking pumpkin pie, decorating gingerbread houses or venturing to local bakeries, such as Sweet Laurel.

Charity is another significant tradition in my family. We participate in an adopt-a-family program, where we purchase items from an underprivileged child’s wishlist. In past years, we have gifted them clothing, tablets and gift cards. Additionally, we donate to Hope in a Suitcase, a nonprofit organization that aids foster children in Los Angeles.

Perhaps my favorite, most sentimental tradition of all, however, is decorating the Christmas tree.

On a day in early December, my parents and I crank up the speaker to blast the best of Michael Bublé and Nat King Cole, while corny Hallmark movies play in the background.

Over the years, we have collected a wide variety of ornaments, ranging from chihuahuas with Santa hats to nutcrackers. My father and I each focus on a different side of the tree, while my mother creative-directs our placement.

Despite the chaos of everyday life, these traditions provide solace, which I look forward to every year.

Dimitri Lykidis

Nothing raises spirits, rounds people, creates excitement quite like … a gamble.

No matter what time of year it is, roulette tables are crowded, card counting persists and parlays bust. My family does not sacrifice such exhilaration during the holiday season, with the pot being the luck of the year.

At midnight on New Years, while the rest of the nation watches the ball drop like an excited seventh-grader, my family surrounds a piping hot lemon cake: Vasilopita. The cake is divided into 10 slices, each representing a person in the family or the house itself. At the bottom of a single slice is a gold coin, indicative of the person who will receive all the good luck for the year ahead.

My uncle may dispute his slice is smaller than the rest, and my brother will rebut that he does not deserve the luck anyway. But as each slice’s pocket is empty, the anticipation rises, with your chances rising. Will I have good luck this year? The year flashes before your eyes, the hypothetical car accident, final exam, college admissions decisions, all the reasons you will need luck. As you lift your slice, the golden brown pillow of cake is faultless, with no money to its name.

Unlucky, but there is always next year!

Michela Zecca

During an ordinary year in San Francisco, my family used to celebrate Thanksgiving in Sonoma County at my grandparents’ house. My grandmother, Lynn, would bake her delicious pecan pie and we would go around the table, each saying something we are grateful for. After the meal, everyone would take my dogs on an evening walk around the neighborhood, focusing entirely on being in the moment and enjoying each other’s company.

Our Thanksgiving traditions were simple yet fulfilling, and provided a moment for pure human connection.

Having quite busy everyday lives, dedicating Thanksgiving to being present with the people you love is the best way to spend the holiday.

This year, my parents and I are celebrating Thanksgiving with different parts of our extended family. Living in Los Angeles has given my family the opportunity to experience our regular Thanksgiving traditions with my aunt and uncle, who we don’t usually visit during this time of year.

When Christmas comes along, my family loves to celebrate. We wait all year long to play the 96.5 KOIT radio station, to bake and decorate sugar cookies with festive frosting and sprinkles, pick out the largest tree we can logically fit in our house, and hang all of our ornaments from when my brother and I were young.

Everyone in my family buys one gift for every other family member, and we all exchange them on Christmas morning, followed by pancakes that I used to eat as a child. Christmas is important to my family because of all of the memories we associate with it.

On New Years, my family spends a few nights at our life-long family friends’ farm in Gilroy. A group of seven families stays at their house to celebrate New Years together.

We light sparklers and firecrackers, and all of the kids play flashlight tag; running all over the property as we wait for the countdown. I have known these kids since I was born and our bonds are so tight that despite seeing them once a year, we are basically inseparable.

My whole family looks forward to seeing our family friends and catching up with each other all night. New Years is my favorite holiday because I get to spend time with my life-long friends and hear about everything that has happened in their lives over the past year.

Julia Torres

When imagining holiday traditions, we often envision a picturesque Hallmark movie scene: powdery snow gently falling outside as a family cinematically pulls a perfectly roasted turkey from the oven, the kids wear their matching plaid pajamas and saunter around a large (and decorated) Christmas tree as Nat King Cole’s voice fills the room.

Whether or not this image describes your experience during the holiday season is up to your discretion. I, however, must admit that this does not exactly resemble what occurs in my household. The beauty of tradition, afterall, is how it is personalized through the nuances of each family.

For example, I am not sure why, but my family tends to hyperfixate on action movies during the holidays. Curling up on the sofa and watching “Die Hard” or “Taken” into the early hours of the morning is the epitome of the holiday spirit to us. There’s nothing quite like the combination of exploding buildings and Go Greek Yogurt to remind us of ongoing festivities.

On a more serious note, we also cherish our annual family dinners, but our tradition isn’t only cooking the food together. Every year, my siblings and I take a journey outside as the trees are changing colors and we scoop up handfuls of our favorite fallen leaves to bring back with us.

Bright oranges and dark reds stand out in the endless piles of leaves as we march back home to bring them to mom. We scatter these leaves as centerpiece decorations on our dining table, a physical testament to the changing season; a unique reminder of the passage of time and memories made.

For New Years, my family takes a completely different route in terms of traditions: We accentuate our Brazilian heritage. Every December, we fly out to Windermere, Florida, where we are happily greeted with esfihas and feijoada—the best kind of welcome

Here, we are able to rekindle old bonds and practice our Portuguese as we visit our Brazilian friends and spend the New Year with them. As is customary in Brazil, we have a large annual gathering that begins at 6 p.m. on December 31 and ends at 6 a.m. on January 1.

We wear white clothing to symbolize peace and eat our favorite Brazilian foods (which we miss so dearly while living in Los Angeles). During this event, we bask in the joys of reunion and contentedly invite the New Year to commence.

Our tradition, per say, is partaking in community.