By Lorie Ham
The Christmas season is a time for traditions. We all have our favorites, and some of us have made up traditions of our own. Here are a few of our staff’s favorite traditions:
“We have a couple favorite Holiday Traditions,” shares Claudia Fletes. “My immediate family (kids and I) love to bake Christmas cookies for family and friends. We usually bake about 5-8 different kinds of cookies/goodies, over a couple days. We have Christmas movies playing on TV or Christmas music on the radio. Dad gets to be our taste tester! We arrange them on a pretty Christmas platter and deliver on December 23 or 24. We set aside one large platter for all our family to enjoy and snack on as we gather for our traditional Christmas Eve tamale making day!
Dalia Jimenez’ family also enjoys getting together with family to eat tamales, and a lot of other great food. “We enjoy all our time together even if we see each other all the time, Christmas is a special time.”
When Stephanie Heier was a child, her father owned a Christmas Tree Farm. “My brother and I spent many hours wandering around and playing hide and seek through the trees…this instilled in me from a young age that cutting down a live tree was the best option.”
On the Saturday following Thanksgiving, Stephanie’s family always goes to pick out a tree, usually at the Christmas Tree Farm near Reedley. “We wander around, picking trees that we think look the best; that means that they are full, have few (or no) empty spots, are the right height, and have a good shape to them (not tall and skinny or fat and squatty). At promising trees, we have a person stand by it, so we can come back to it to see how it holds up to any others that we have liked. Then we cut it down with a chainsaw. Many others who we see there always comment on how smart we are to bring our chainsaw! We are pros at this by now! We usually ride the train, have some hot chocolate, and then go out for breakfast. It is one of my favorite traditions, and we are passing it on to our daughter, it is one of her favorite traditions as well!”
“Our family makes peppernuts (pfeffernusse) each Christmas,” shares Jerry Linscheid. “There isn’t any pepper or nuts in our recipe. Hundreds of versions of this cookie exist. We use the recipe from my wife’s mom. The cookies end up being pretty small, about the diameter of a dime. After mixing the dough, we roll it out in pencil-thin ropes and put them in the freezer. When it’s time to bake, we pull out a few ropes at a time, because as they thaw, they become harder to work with. We cut the ropes into ¼” slices and place them on a cookie sheet close enough to get as many as possible, but not so close that they touch during baking. It is a pretty labor-intensive process, which is why it works well with a family. The peppernuts come out crisp and keep a long time (if you make enough). We measure the output in gallons.”
Peppernuts Recipe:
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- 1 cup butter or margarine
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- 4 cups brown sugar
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- 2 eggs
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- ¼ cup warm water
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- 1 tsp. anise oil
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- 6 cups flour
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- 1 tbs. baking soda
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- 1 tsp. cream of tartar
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- 1 tsp. cinnamon
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- 1 tsp. mace
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- 1 tsp. cloves
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- 1 tsp. nutmeg
- Family Christmas traditions make the holidays magical. What is your favorite tradition?
