Junior Emily Abshire – England

What is a tradition your family does every year for Christmas?
One thing we do on Christmas is we have a big roast dinner, like a traditional roast dinner, which includes Yorkshire pudding. I don’t know if a lot of Americans know about (the food), but they’re called popovers in America. That’s something that we eat on every roast.
Also, we wear these crowns that come from Christmas crackers. They’re called crackers because when you pull them apart, they explode because they have gunpowder in them. When you open them, there’s always a joke, a riddle, a hat and a toy in them. So you wear the paper hat while you eat, and then you share your jokes and your toys.

Junior Valeria Menendez – Domican Republic

What do you do to celebrate during the holiday season?
Every other year, we go to the Dominican Republic, and it’s like a whole family reunion. We all get together and have tons of events. One thing that my mom and I always do is we go to this street vendor who fries fish straight from the beach and fries this special dough called “yanikeke,” and we eat it on the street just like hoodlums, and it’s so good.

What do you do to celebrate it? Is there anything that your culture does specifically?
We all get together at my great-aunt’s basement that’s kind of like a club. We all go down there and listen to music and dance to Hispanic music. On Jan. 16, we get presents for Three Kings Day.

Do you eat anything special?
We eat only Dominican food. We don’t eat ham. We eat rice and beans, stews and other Dominican food.

Freshman Alessandro Thielmann – Italy

What is a tradition your family does every year for Christmas?
We have one dinner with our family in Michigan and one back home with all our family friends.

What kinds of food do you make?
My mom makes tortellini every Christmas, and we usually wake up the morning of Christmas and make them. It takes around three hours. It’s all homemade and it’s tortellini filled with meat, so my mom makes the pasta, and we cut it. It’s usually best if you have three or four people because the pasta dries out fast, so you have to make them really quick. We cook them in broth.

How many years have you done this tradition for?
My mom’s mom did it when she was a little kid too, so it’s kind of like an old tradition. It’s maybe like a 50-year-old tradition.

What makes you want to continue the tradition?
Well, my mom’s mom passed away, so to (my mom), it’s kind of like a memory. And I hope that someday, I’ll carry on the tradition too.

Is this an Italian tradition?
It relates because a lot of Italian families do that. It is like a traditional thing to do in Italy. Plus, with our family friends here, they’re all Italian, so we bring (the tortellini) there, and everyone brings something Italian. In a way, it’s kind of like Italian Christmas.

Do you still celebrate traditional American Christmas?
Our Christmas in Michigan is more American. In Italy, it’s less about presents on Christmas because most of the people are Catholic, so it’s about Jesus’s birthday. Up in Michigan, we unwrap all our presents with our grandparents, so I guess in Michigan we have a more traditional American-style Christmas.