I spend every Christmas and New Year with my maternal side of my family: my mom, my dad, my sister Alinah (class of 2027), my Abuela, my Abuelo, my Tía Yara, my Tío Pablo, my cousin PJ (he is 6), and the youngest member of our returning family Emilio (he is 4). We have a new member who will be joining us this year and he is my grandparents’ German shepherd puppy, Benji. In my household, we do more of the celebrating of Christmas on the 24th rather than the 25th. We spend the 25th going to church and relaxing.
Before all this happens, we all go to my grandparents’ house and the grandchildren get to pick out the tree. The tree gets brought back to my grandparents’ house and my abuelo sets it up while the rest of us take out the ornaments from the basement. While doing this, we play Christmas music in the background. Once the tree is ready, we all start putting ornaments on the tree. My abuela sets up the nativity as we decorate the tree. All of the grandchildren have an ornament with their first name initial on it, and we have a competition on who can put it the highest. (My cousins always win since their dad helps them).
On the day before Christmas Eve, my whole family meets at my grandparents’ house and we make tamales somewhat as a family. My Abuela, my sister, my tía, my mom, and I make the tamales while my cousins fool around in the backyard playing with all of their toys. We always make tamales for Christmas. It is a family tradition. It is also very time-consuming so we always start the day before.
Then it is finally Christmas Eve. We put tamales to cook and watch Christmas movies. My cousin’s favorite is “Home Alone.” You will never not see it on the TV during Christmas time. We all eat dinner and we go to our assigned tables. Adults to the adult table and kids to the kids’ table. I, myself, am still part of the kids’ table which, in my opinion, is the better table. We all go to the kitchen and serve ourselves our food. We chose from a variety of tamales. Then we watch a movie that is not “Home Alone” as a family. It is usually “Elf” every year. Once the movie is over my grandparents play music and we all dance whether we like it or not. That lasts over an hour for sure. Then we finally got to open our presents. The kids hand everyone their presents. My cousins always open their gifts right away and do not wait for everyone else to get theirs. At the end of unwrapping gifts we all exchange thank yous to one another. We spend the night at my grandparents’ house and get our own room. The grandkids share a room since adults get their own room; plus, I love my cousins. Before going to bed, we pray and we leave one of our shoes so Santa knows where to leave everyone’s present.
On Christmas morning, my cousin Emilio always wakes up first. He always decides to wake the rest of us up with him. We all go and find our presents and watch Home Alone (again) while our parents are still asleep. We eat pan dulce with our grandparents while we wait for our parents to wake up. We all go to Christmas Mass after that, and once we come home, we have lunch. We all stay for a while afterwards then we finally go home.
