Holiday Traditions From Around the World

The holidays are upon us yet again. While many of us have our own unique family and American Christmas traditions—including decorating the Christmas tree, kissing under the mistletoe, drinking as much eggnog as possible, watching Lifetime Christmas movies, and mad dashes to overcrowded stores to get that perfect gift—we thought we’d take a look at holiday traditions from around the world and see if there are any worth incorporating. My vote is on the Christmas pickle!     

Romantic

In Austria on St. Barbara’s Day, December 4, the tradition is to place a single cherry twig in a vase. If it blooms before Christmas Eve then good luck and marriage will follow. In Thessaly, Greece, boys place a cedar branch and girls place a white cherry branch over a fire. The branch that burns the fastest brings the person good luck and an upcoming marriage (yay, more marriage). In Sweden, whoever finds the almond in the Ris à la Malta (rice pudding) will marry within the next year (yep, more weddings).

In Poland during Wigilia, also known as Christmas Eve Supper, straw is placed under a tablecloth to commemorate the birth of Jesus in the manger. Guests take turns removing a piece of straw. If you pick a green one, lucky you, it means good luck or marriage will come to you, while yellow means another year of being single, which depending on your outlook may be a good thing. Meanwhile in the Czech Republic, single women throw a single shoe over their shoulder. If the shoe points to the front door, marriage is coming. If not, time to have another glass of that wonderful Czech beer.

Fun

When German families decorate the Christmas tree, the “last ornament to be hung is the Christmas pickle—usually a glass ornament that may have been passed down through generations.” The pickle is hidden away on the tree and the first child to spot the pickle gets a special treat and good luck the rest of the year. I really hope I spot the pickle this year.  Really hope I do. Please, I want the pickle.

But if you can’t find the pickle, take comfort in the Icelandic myth of the Jólakötturinn, a savage beast whose name roughly translates to “Yule Cat.” The Jólakötturinn is a huge, angry monster who “attacks the badly dressed.” Originating in medieval times as a way to motivate workers during the autumn wool processing time, those who worked hard would be rewarded with new clothes, and those who did not would have to face the Jólakötturinn—poorly dressed, which he does not like at all. If you’re on the naughty list this year (badly dressed or not) and happen to live in Austria, watch out for Krampus, Santa’s helper whose job it is to beat naughty children with branches.

Nativity scenes are a common sight here in the US and in other countries, but in some parts of Catalonia in Spain they allegedy take it to a different level. Along with the manger and baby Jesus, Mary, Joseph, wise men, and maybe a few angels, there’s a man defecating. Called the "Caganer," the figurine is typically depicted as a peasant with his trousers down, emptying his bowels, apparently in an attempt at "fertilising the Earth.” In that same vein, Catalans celebrate Caga Tió (translated as the “pooping guy”), whose smiling face, red nose, and legs (along with a red hat) are stuck on a log full of candy. During advent, children care for the log like it’s a pet, and on Christmas Eve or thereabouts they beat it until the candy comes out.

Since in Norway witches and other spirits come out to play on Christmas Eve, women hide all the brooms in the house before going to bed. Because witches might be doing their own Christmas shopping.

Unusual (but in a Totally Non-Judgmental Way)

In Venezuela, families roller skate to early morning mass in the week before Christmas. Roads are closed to provide a safe and easier journey. While many children wait for Santa Claus to come down the chimney and leave presents, Italian children wait for Befana, a kindly old witch who flies around on her broomstick and deliveries gifts and fills stockings with toys, candy, and fruit (for those children who have been good) and lumps of coal, onions, or garlic (for those who have been bad). Very helpfully she uses her broom to tidy before she leaves which is why Italian parents leave her a well-deserved glass of wine.

In Estonia, many families go to the sauna to spend quality time together on Christmas Eve. It’s believed that a sauna “elf” lives there to protect it and to make sure people behave themselves. But they need to be careful after sunset, because that’s when the sauna turns into a place for the spirits and dead ancestors.

Ukrainians decorate their Christmas trees with artificial spiders and cobwebs due to folklore about the woman who could not afford to decorate her tree. The next morning the children woke up to the tree covered in cobwebs which then turned into gold and silver making the family rich. So a spider web on Christmas morning brings good luck. Christmas in Latvia sounds like fun to me. There groups dressed as mummies go house-to-house getting treats and giving blessings in return. In Japan be sure to send white Christmas cards to friends and family, because traditionally red is saved for funeral announcements.

Food

We’ve shared our favorite holiday recipes, but what does the rest of the world eat? In Japan, it’s not Christmas unless there’s KFC—yes, that’s Kentucky Fried Chicken. Since a marketing campaign in the 1970s (apparently very effective), KFC has been associated with Christmas, and the tradition was born. We’re more used to Christmas hams and stuffing, but South Africans snack on deep-fried Christmas caterpillars from the Emperor moth. Icelanders typically eat reindeer on Christmas and before that, they have some boiled potatoes and fermented skate fish.

Since Christmas is in summertime in Australia, many celebrate with a barbecue, while Argentinians typically eat their main Christmas meal on Christmas Eve, which includes a dish of veal, tuna, mayonnaise sauce, and capers. In Oaxaca, Mexico, there is a huge contest and festival surrounding the Night of the Radishes, where people use oversized radishes to carve holiday scenes and display them in public every December 23, though it’s unclear if they eat them afterwards. And Christians in India celebrate with banana trees!

Holiday Party 2015

Although last year we were at a different venue, this week we continued our long tradition of holding our annual holiday party at the Institute of Culinary Education. We divided into teams and made acorn squash ravioli with sage brown butter sauce, slow bake salmon with roasted Meyer lemon sauce, and banana chocolate chip bread pudding, all while enjoying prosecco and a lovely sparkling rosé—because the most effective way to cook is with a glass of alcohol in one hand. 

NY Times: “The Deported: Uprooted from his life and family in the United States, a Honduran deportee returns to the country that he tried so hard to escape”

Although deportations this past year are at their lowest levels since President Obama took office in 2009, nevertheless he still has the reputation as the “Deporter-in-Chief” and is still criticized for his harsh deportation policies that over his administration have torn many immigrant families apart. Luke Mogelson in the New York Times profiles some recent deportees from Honduras, a country dominated by gang violence and extreme poverty.

Kelvin Villanueva

Mogelson tells the story of Kelvin Villanueva, a Honduran who lived in the US for fifteen years. One night in Kansas City, Villanueva was pulled over by a policeman because of a broken taillight, arrested, and transferred to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). After spending the next four months in prisons and detention centers, he was flown back to Honduras, a country he fled because the notorious and violent street gang, the 18th Street Gang, recruited him and threatened him if he did not join. In Kansas City he left behind his partner Suelen Bueno and their four children. While with ICE he attempted to apply for asylum, but was determined ineligible.           

Mogelson does an excellent job at describing Villanueva’s experience of being undocumented in the US and deported. He explains the constant fear of deportation that the undocumented live under, harsh detention at ICE, and being returned in manacles to his home country he tried desperately to escape. Then there’s the immigration attorney who willingly takes thousands of dollars (which they’ve borrowed from a money lender) in case fees and who appears more interested in the Kansas City Royals playoff game than in helping Villanueva evaluate any feasible options for returning to the US. Not to mention Villanueva’s boss who still allegedly owes him thousands of dollars from work and later comes to his house and steals his power tools, the most expensive items he owns.

Villanueva is just one of many deportees in similar situations. Mogelson writes:  

Over the last five years, the United States has deported more than half a million Hondurans, Guatemalans and Salvadorans, many of whom, like Villanueva, have had to leave their children behind. Although Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, says it exercises discretion to target lawbreakers for removal, a majority of Central American deportees have no criminal record. Among those who do, about half are guilty of either a traffic violation or an immigration-related crime — entering the country illegally, for instance.

In Honduras, Villanueva stays with his aunt in a one-room plywood structure that stands in an open field with his brother, himself deported after a DUI conviction, who has left behind his US-citizen wife, son, and daughter. His brother has missed his six-year-old’s birthday, while Villanueva’s youngest daughter refuses to sleep at night, determined to be awake when he returns. His youngest son is uncharacteristically introverted and lethargic, sleeping most of the day. Villanueva’s only thought is to return to his family, even though if caught again entering the US without legal documentation he could face felony charges and a lengthy prison sentence. ‘‘I just need to raise them,’’ Villanueva says of his children. 

Bayron and Belky Cardona

In Honduras, Mogelson meets Bayron and Belky Cardona, a couple who had managed to cross the Rio Grande. Scared of the Border Patrol in Texas, they tried to reenter Mexico but were caught. Cardona and Belky are college graduates in their twenties who had opened a computer-repair shop in Honduras in a building owned by Belky’s father. Mogelson explains why they tried to escape to the US:

Their neighborhood was entirely under the control of the MS-13; members of the gang soon confronted Cardona, demanding an impuesto de guerra, or war tax. Impuestos de guerra are a common source of revenue for gangs throughout Honduras, and in Cardona and Belky’s area, every business paid. The amount the gang wanted far exceeded what Cardona could afford. When he failed to produce the money, the MS-13 threatened to kill him. Cardona and Belky went to the United States Embassy, applied for visas and were denied. Then they alerted the police — ‘‘our big error,’’ Cardona told me.

Now back in Honduras after being deported, Bayron has changed his appearance, grown a beard and replaced his contacts with glasses. While Belky’s father had paid half the amount that MS-13 wanted, neither of them think they could safely remain in Honduras. They are unsure what to do. Belky is humiliated by their treatment in the US. She describes being in a room in McAllen, Texas after her capture where officers are studying monitors showing video feeds from a section of the border. “They laugh at us,’’ she tells Mogelson. ‘‘One officer was celebrating all the people they’d caught. They watch the people crossing — and they laugh at us.’’

Happy Chanukah!

Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn, New York.

Last night I visited the World's Largest Menorah at Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn, just north of Prospect Park. At thirty-two feet tall (the maximum allowed by Jewish law), this Menorah, sponsored by the Chabad in Brooklyn, has been a yearly tradition in Grand Army Plaza since 1985. With assistance from a Con Edison cherry-picker, Rabbi Shimon Hecht is joined by community leaders, philanthropists, and special guests in the lighting ceremony. Every night the celebration is accompanied with live music and hot latkes for all, and special gifts are distributed to every child.

VOX: “For years, TV has treated immigrants as punchlines. These shows are fighting back.”

The American television and film industry has an unfortunate long history of stereotypical and offensive portrayals of immigrants. These include Apu, the Indian convenience store clerk voiced by Greek-American Hank Azaria in The Simpsons, Ashton Kutcher’s absurdly racist portrayal in brown face of an Indian man looking for love in a pop chips commercial, Andy Kaufman’s generically-foreign character Latka on Taxi, and Wilmer Valderrama’s “lisping, perpetually horny immigrant whose origins were painted with such broad strokes that his very name was a play on an acronym for ‘Foreign Exchange Student.’”

Vox writer Caroline Framke, herself the daughter of an Iranian immigrant, looks at three current shows—CW’s Jane the Virgin, Netflix’s Master of None, and ABC’s Fresh Off the Boat—that refuse to play to these stereotypes and instead offer “empathetic, heartfelt, and genuinely funny portrayals of immigrants that make the clichés feel both outdated and unnecessary.”

Master of None

Aziz Ansari and fellow show creator Alan Yang have done an excellent job at portraying the experiences of minorities (Asian-Americans, in particular) trying to work in the film and television industry (more on that from Ansari in this excellent New York Times piece), but the show also details the widely varying experiences between first- and second-generation immigrants.

The second episode ("Parents") examines the childhood experiences of Dev’s father Ramesh (played charmingly by Ansari’s real father, Shoukath Ansari) in India and the racism and isolation he later experienced in the US. This episode also features Dev's friend Brian (Kelvin Yu) and his father, Peter (Clem Cheung), and a flashback to his own childhood in Taiwan, his immigration to the US, the racism that he also experienced (seriously, enough with the racism, America), and the experience of watching his son assimilate. As Framke writes, this episode “goes on to feature some truly lovely, funny moments, particularly between Dev and Brian's parents as they bond over their immigration experiences. And after learning more about their parents' pasts, Dev and Brian are impressed by their sacrifices but still can't quite understand them.”

Jane the Virgin

This show, which both celebrates and pokes fun at telenovelas, is especially focused on the differing "immigrant" experiences through three generations. The titular character, Jane Villanueva (Gina Rodriguez), gets pregnant after being accidentally artificially inseminated, but notwithstanding that far-fetched premise, the show has a lot to say regarding the multigenerational Villanueva family. There’s Jane, who the show creator, Jennie Snyder Urman, describes as “a very American girl,” her mother Xiomara (Andrea Navedo), who bridges the gap between her very American daughter and her own mother, Alba (Ivonne Coll), who is an undocumented immigrant.

The show’s second season focuses on Alba and her quest for a Green Card as well as the difficult decisions and hardships she's faced as an undocumented immigrant. This issue is especially poignant since cast member Diane Guerrero, who plays Jane's childhood friend Lina, watched her parents get deported when she was fourteen years old. "It's just an incredibly gut-wrenching story, which she told me early on when we first cast her," Urman said in Vox. "It's such an emotional, scary position to be in. We didn't want to just take that and make it something soapy and campy."

Fresh off the Boat

While this sitcom faced some controversy early on when Eddie Huang, a chef who wrote the memoir upon which the show is based, didn’t like the family-friendly direction it was going, the show nevertheless takes a complex look at how Louis and Jessica Huang, first-generation immigrants from Taiwan, raise their three sons in Orlando, and, to be perfectly honest, deal with all the crazy and (at times) racist white people.

While Louis enthusiastically embraces American culture and owns a steakhouse called Cattleman's Ranch, Jessica struggles with belonging and watching her children assimilate to the American lifestyle and culture. The stories range from the oldest trying to fit in at school (he wants to eat lunchables) and having to deal with racist classmates to how the Huangs' Chinese traditions clash with the American ones.

While these shows are just a start, as Framke says, they “illustrate that immigrants are more than their accents, their different lunches, or their traditions you might not understand. They're just people — and their struggles, mishaps, truths, and triumphs are exactly the kinds of stories television should be salivating to tell.”