My family had very few traditions. But there was one thing I could count on without fail: Tamales for dinner on Christmas. Back then we lived on the other side of the Orange Curtain, and my mom would get up at 4:00 a.m. to travel to downtown LA for hand made tamales from her favorite Hispanic patisserie. In fact, tamales for Christmas is a California-adopted tradition from its Latin heritage. And since my grandfather was of Latin descent, my mom adopted the tamale tradition in his honor.
As my siblings and I have gotten older, we've begun establishing our own holiday rituals, one of my favorites being the Christmas brunch. For the last 10 years, my mother-in-law has hosted the brunch, but she recently passed the brunch baton on to my sister and I. Best of all, everyone invited usually makes it because there's no one else hosting a Christmas Brunch. And then everyone goes off to their Christmas dinners full of holiday cheer and a morning of flowing mimosas.
Do you have any unique holiday traditions?
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Every Christmas Eve all the men in my family drink whiskey and watch a spaghetti western.