An upcoming holiday, known as Christmas is coming to town. These last two weeks, a few students from Del Mar have been more than happy to share their Christmas traditions and/or what they do over the holiday break.
Freshman, Aleena Garcia likes to spend her Christmas at her grandma’s house. On Christmas Eve, she makes tamales, plays games, and stays up late with her family. “On Christmas Eve we just stay up till midnight, we just hang out,” says Garcia. Some traditions that connect to her ethnicity is “Making tamales” states Garcia.
On the other hand, Freshman Diana Lopez also likes to spend a lot of quality time with her family, playing games and opening gifts. “Last year we played this one game where there [are] marshmallows and we use cups and try to pick them up and put them in a plate and each year we play a different game” states Lopez. Her favorite childhood Christmas memory is “staying up waiting for Santa to eat the cookies.”
Junior, Nalani Jackson likes to spend her Christmas traveling and spending time with family and likes to feast on seafood for their Christmas meal. “We kinda just go to my family’s house, we don’t eat like a distinct type of food. Foodwise my family likes to eat seafood, so we eat seafood for Christmas.”
Jackson says her family and her “Travel a lot and we go places, I’m originally from Arkansas, we sometimes travel to the south and just go visit my family or up north.” Since Jackson and her family don’t live very close to each other, she says “We’ll go to Christmas in the park and stuff like that, you know sometimes we have game nights and stuff like that, it’s really about bonding for us because we’re all really scattered.”
Others like senior, Huber Trujillo Flores like to travel for fun. Trujillo Flores and his family like to “Go out to the snow sometimes, particularly Lake Tahoe” says Trujillo Flores. He and his family also like to feast on a lot of different Hispanic foods “We make tamales, pozole, a dessert my mom makes is a fun-fetti cake occasionally” says Trujillo Flores.
Another senior, Wyatt Borgman likes to go somewhere different each Christmas. “We try getting out of the house and going somewhere, this christmas we’re going to San Diego with family, particularly we go down south and visit family… or up to the snow in Lake Tahoe,” says Borgman. Something that Borgman thinks he and his family do that may be different is “We’ll try to watch as many christmas movies as we can just to see if we can beat our record from last year, I think we watched like 14 christmas movies last year.”
Rafael Cruz a sophomore, likes to have a good time with family “I like to have a lot of food with my family, spend time together, overall be together and enjoy the moment” states Cruz. Something that Cruz does with his family is “Sometimes we usually go around the entire neighborhood, like the entire area, and look at everyone’s houses and Christmas lights and like sometimes knock on their doors and congratulate them and tell them they did a good job.”
Every Christmas Eve junior Jayde Balagso likes to visit her grandparents with cousins and family “my grandparents always have a big party for all my cousins and I, and all my family to come, but one of the things that makes it special is we have a huge huge christmas tree and most of the time its a real christmas tree and it’s really fun to see it decorated” says Balagso. Not only does she just spend time with her family but also spends time with friends “I usually go to Christmas in the park with friends or we’ll go ice skating at the shark’s ice” states Balagso.
