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tradition (tra`di•cn) n..
The body of customs, thought, practices, etc., belonging to a particular family, and
handed down from generation to generation, especially by word of mouth, over a relatively
long period.
Brazilian Christmas
My Mom always made plastic bags for each (and every)
member of the family and those other relatives and close friends who
always stopped by on Christmas Eve. She would fill each bag up with
chocolates, bonbons and all kinds of nuts (walnut, hazelnut, and of course
our national Brazilian nut, as well as others). Then she would label each
bag with the name of the person who would get it, and place it on the top
of that person's pile of gifts. We "knew" Santa had brought us
the gifts, but we also knew that one was from her. She used to get us to
help her also, that way we could all participate (and anticipate)
Christmas. It was (and still) is special for us because in Brazil we don't
have the tradition of hanging socks at the fireplace. To tell the truth,
even fireplaces are rarely found in this giant tropical country of ours.
We always set up our Christmas scenery, and that was
another opportunity to get the whole family involved, even the adults. My
mom would either "plant" rice seeds in soda lids (when it came
in glass bottles), on a tiny ball of cotton. She would water them every
other day. Then we would arrange them with the Christmas scenery, so it
would always look green and nice for the sheep to have nice fields and
pasture. Or we would have a family excursion to any place in town where
one of us had seen great moss recently, and then we would "cut"
the moss along with some earth, and do with its pieces as we had done with
the rice seeds. Not to damage the coffee table, on which we installed the
Christmas scenery, we would previously cover it with plastic. We also
watered it every other day, using an empty spray deodorant or whatever.
The path on which the Three Wise Men would "walk" was made of
real sand and small rocks. After I got married I started my own tradition
of having my kids "walk" the three wise men, starting on
Christmas Day, and going a bit further each day, so that they would arrive
at the crib on January 6 (their day).
When my kids were small, and kept asking me
"How many days till Christmas?" a zillion times a day, I used to
solve the problem in a nice way. I had seen this at an Iowan Home
Economics class when I was an exchange student there: I cut a huge pine
tree on brilliant paper. The "wood" part was cut on velvet-like
brown paper. The tree had 24 "branches", its top being the 25th.
I cut 24 red balls on brilliant paper, and a star on golden brilliant
paper. Then on December 1st I pasted the tree on a wall at home, from
floor to ceiling it would reach! I used scotch tape, so as not to damage
the painting when putting it away after Christmas. Every night one of my
kids (I have two girls and a boy) would pick a red "ball"
(actually a circle) and tape it to one of the lowest branches of the tree.
They knew the "empty" branches (with no "ball") were
the remaining days to Christmas. They learned to count up to 25 faster
than the other kids their age, and it was really fun for all of us. My
husband would tape the star to the top, just before we left for my, or his
mom's house for the family Christmas gathering.
Olimpia Thorne
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