As featured in the Village of Pemberton’s Community Update this week, community members celebrate the season in a range of different ways.

Members of the Pemberton Multicultural Network shared some of their approaches, to blending new and old traditions.

 Cristina’s Christmas is very different from her celebrations in Mexico because here she only celebrates with her husband and son. Sometimes they invite co-workers to celebrate with them. They eat turkey for Christmas (not tamales like in Mexico) but the celebration is still on the 24^th with gifts opened after dinner.

Mari is hoping to try turkey and Christmas cake and is excited to find out how her first Canadian Christmas will differ from back home in Japan.

Miho’s husband is working so she plans to go skiing with friends on Christmas Day.

Diosdado and his family will try to bring as much of the Philippines to their celebration as possible. They will spend Christmas Eve preparing traditional food like adobo and pancit which they will eat after a blessing. After dinner they will exchange gifts and then stay up late to greet the Christmas morning. If possible, they will attend midnight mass.

Margharita will also follow Swiss Christmas tradition as much as possible with a light fish dinner on the 24^th followed by gift-giving and lots of tea, coffee and cookies to help them stay awake before attending midnight mass. On Christmas Day they will sleep in before the big Christmas meal at lunchtime of a roast, special dessert and a glass of wine.

Maria is from Poland but her Christmas celebrations in Pemberton are much more modest. She likes to keep some of the traditions but mostly she finds them a lot of work. Her celebration starts on the 24^th at suppertime with a light dinner of fish or seafood and mushroom soup, followed by the exchange of gifts. Traditionally, this meal is started when the first star is seen in the night sky – probably around 5pm. On the morning of the 25^th Maria will go to church and then home to more food. The big meal of the day is dinner which will have lots of meat – pork, fried chicken, beef – followed by a traditional Christmas cheesecake with raisins or cranberries and rolled cake with poppy seeds inside.

Toshi and his family try to celebrate the Canadian way now they live here. In Japan people only get one gift but here they have seen that there should be many gifts under the tree. Now that they have their tree cut down from under the power lines, they will start adding the presents to it.

What do you do to celebrate the season?