Tis The Season For Traditions

Having lived away from my home country for the past decade, adapting to holiday celebrations presented quite a significant learning curve. In your home country, adhering to cultural traditions becomes second nature, requiring little conscious thought. However, during our initial year abroad, attempts to replicate family customs proved disappointing. Everything was just wrong in tiny ways and nothing felt authentic.

In our second year, a breakthrough occurred when a friend invited us to partake in their Christmas Eve tradition of homemade pizza and a shared movie—a practice they adopted upon moving abroad. This led to a realization: our family couldn’t entirely replicate our home country’s celebrations. Instead, we embraced the opportunity to forge new traditions in our host country while incorporating aspects of its cultural practices. Now, this was fun!

Since then, our family eagerly anticipates December with Christmas Eve marked by hosting friends for homemade pizzas and Peruvian hot chocolate—a tradition bestowed upon us by our friends years ago combined with the flavors of Christmas in our past host country. Additionally, we have enjoyed our traditional beach picnic on Christmas day, sometimes accompanied by the “playful” monkeys native to our new home. This allows us to embrace the warm weather, and it has made it difficult for us to think of Christmas as a “winter” holiday!

Though these traditions differ from those in our home country, they share key principles that bind us to our community, link us to our past, and cultivate enduring memories. While some traditions, such as arranging the nativity scene and taking time to reflect during each week of Advent, have not changed for our family, creating new traditions enabled us to celebrate in ways rooted in the hope and joy of the season. Every moment, from the initial setup to the final celebration, is a testament to the enduring worth of our diverse and evolving traditions. How will you be celebrating this Christmas season? Perhaps you can make a new tradition.