Holiday Traditions

From family tree decorating gatherings and staff team charity support, to carrying on traditional family meals - faculty and staff celebrate holidays in very special ways. Enjoy reading each other's rituals and memories passed down through cultures and generations. We hope this holiday season will be filled joyous traditions new and old, happy holidays!

Dean Michael Strong
It's easy. Every Christmas, all my siblings, significant others, kids, and now their kid's kids, gather at my mother's house about a week before Christmas to decorate her Christmas tree. We all bring some aspect of the dinner - the table(s) extend from the dining room into the living room. It's a wonderful time and marks the true beginning of the season for all of us. We've been doing it now for as long as I can remember.

Grace Parraga
Instead of gift giving or a Secret Santa, our team picks a charity every year in early November and all the lab members fill my yellow teapot with donations - everybody gives so the focus is on 100% participation - not the amount. After the end of November payday, I count up the donations, and double it - then a collaborator, Dr. McCormack, doubles the original amount again! We have done this every Holiday season for the last 6 or 7 years. Last year we gave $500 to Mission Services and at $3.10/meal that's 161 meals we provided! This year, we are also giving to Mission Services and the total will be $840 or 270 meals!

Ola Bienkowski
I come from an Eastern European Polish family and the big celebration for us is Christmas. The children in the family are told to watch for the first star they see in the sky, and that is our indication for everyone to sit at the dinner table. The first thing we do is say a small prayer and then each of us takes a host from a plate, and then takes turns wishing everyone in the room their good wishes for the upcoming year, the person receiving the wish breaks a piece off the host as a symbol of sharing.

Pam Foster
The holiday tradition that my family started a few years ago is to make Christmas phone calls in place of sending Christmas cards. Starting a few weeks before Christmas gives enough time to create the list of who to call, and to complete the calls around the world. It takes less time than writing Christmas cards, and it seems like a more personally touching way to reach out and share the spirit of the holiday season. The voice of a loved one, the laughter, and the joy is shared 'live'.

Lauren Solomon
Every year on December 25th my family gets together and goes out for Chinese food and a movie.

Dr. Michael Rieder
In view of my wife's long Franco-Ontarian heritage we all get together in Windsor for a huge breakfast Christmas morning which includes, of course, home-made Tourtière. While Mimi used to make them, the custom has been passed on to my wife, so that one weekend in December we have an assembly line in the kitchen making meat pies.

Denise Figlewicz
Growing up in Chicago, a city where people of Polish descent numbered second only to Warsaw, my family observed Polish customs for the major holidays. The Polish tradition includes a very special meal on Christmas Eve, Vigilia. My mother would tell us stories of when she was young, and the policy of the Catholic Church was that only one substantial meal could be eaten on Christmas Eve, the men would sit at the table and stretch the meal into hours! However, with my family, we cleaned the dishes and listened to Christmas music on our favorite 33 1/3 rpm records prior to getting dressed up and heading to church for Midnight Mass. As children, we always worried... could we stay awake, as the Mass was held in Latin. But, coming home from Midnight Mass we burst in the door to eat Christmas cookies and drink punch, exchange "Merry Christmas!" with each other, and have little treats in our stockings as a warm up to opening presents after breakfast on Christmas Day. My father always had the week off between Christmas and New Year's so it was a relaxed and wonderful time for our family.

Dianne Brooks
On Christmas Eve my friend and I host a little gathering in Dorchester, friends and family get together to watch the Santa Parade fly by. All the neighbours are outside lining the streets as well to wave and cheer as Santa travels quickly through all the streets wishing everyone a Merry Christmas! After Santa has passed by the house we go inside for food, drink, trips down memory lane and many, many laughs. Santa always pops around later in the evening to ensure the little ones are heading home to bed so they can be sound asleep for his visit. As a child we did not live right in the village but my Dad worked on the float and my Mother would load us all in the car and take us into Dorchester to see the Santa Parade before he headed off for the North Pole. It is hard to believe that all these many, many years later Santa is still making his way through the village on Christmas Eve and I am still enjoying watching him go by.

Ericka Simon
I'm excited to share our holiday traditions (Hungarian style)! We still celebrate the old traditional way, you could say it is celebrated twice. The first is, and for those of us that still have young children in the house, December 6th - St. Nicholas' Day ('Miklós' in Hungarian). The kids put boots in the windows (same as stockings that are hung by the fireplace here - which we also do on Christmas Eve). Mikulás (Santa) leaves the boot filled with goodies like candies, tangerines, walnuts, chocolate Santas and also toys and books.

The second is Christmas Eve. Candles are decorated with red and gold ribbons that symbolize life and brightness. Christmas trees are only ever decorated on Christmas Eve - never before and generally it is a private family holiday - no parties, etc. Again, if there are young children in the house the adults decorate the tree and surprise the children on Christmas morning. In the morning a small tree bell rings and music plays. The tree is usually decorated with nuts, fruit, paper cornucopia filled with homemade fudge ('Szalon Cukor'), embroidered felt hearts, candy slippers, honey cookies ('Mezeskalacs'), lights, sparkles, and paper-tied bows. (I could never make those like Mom).

"Boldog Karacsónyt Kivánok!" - I wish you a Merry Christmas!

Shannon Woodhouse
We have a big dinner on Christmas Eve with the whole family. We don't have traditional turkey since we also celebrate both Canadian and US Thanksgiving. So Christmas dinner includes appetizers, prime rib, perogies, cabbage rolls and a special Christmas raspberry dessert. We round out the evening with a game of Christmas Carol Dictionary! Wassailing is a tough one to draw!


Evelyn Levy
For the past 26 years, my family has been spending Christmas Eve with our best friends/youngest daughter's Godparents. When we first started it was only my husband and I and our eldest daughter. Now the group has grown to 20-25 people, but we somehow manage to fit into their tiny apartment. We have a huge feast (cooked by the one and only amazing, fantastic, wonderful, loving "Aunt Marg") and do a $5 gift exchange. Then we go home and open one gift before going to bed. The funniest time was when my two oldest daughters opened the heaviest present they could find under the tree, which just happened to be big bottles of mouthwash. Although somewhat disappointed that they could not open another gift, we laughed it off and went to bed. We will continue this tradition this year and hopefully for many years to come.

Dr. Gregor Reid
I follow a tradition that came from my mum (not sure how much it was influenced by her Irish and Scottish heritage). She believed that you should clean your house and empty out all the garbage on Hogmanay (New Year's Eve) before the 'Bells' (when the clock chimes midnight) so as to enter the new year fresh and ready for a new start. My wife doesn't object!

Pam Bere
I'm not sure if this counts as a "tradition" yet or not, but it is something our family is trying this year and I'm hoping we will continue it in the years to come. This year, instead of getting my two boys (aged 4 and 7 years) a traditional Advent calendar to count down to Christmas, I wanted to try something that would get us into the spirit of the season with perhaps a little less of a focus on gifts!

On each calendar date the boys have received an activity card that bears the date and a Christmas-y activity to do that day. So far we've started some Christmas baking, made a snowman (ok… well we turned that one into a family snowman drawing activity), watched a Christmas movie - complete with popcorn - and learned about the story of St. Nicholas. We're going to try to leave out our shoes to see if he might visit our house! The coming days' activities also focus on remembering to take the time to say thank you to others who help us all year and to remember those for whom Christmas might not be quite as joyous as it is for us.


Dr. Dave Spence
On Christmas Eve we have a supper featuring tourtiere ( a French-Canadian pork pie with mashed potatoes), followed by the hanging by the fireplace of the stockings of whomever is staying in our home that night, and then a reading of "The night before Christmas", by the youngest grandchild who can read. On Christmas morning we have a breakfast with waffles and other goodies, and then we have our Christmas turkey on Boxing Day so the kids and grandchildren can have Christmas dinner at the other grandparents' homes on Christmas Day.

With three sons, three wonderful daughters-in-law and nine grandchildren, a 3-ring circus is guaranteed!

Jennifer Stanley
About 3 weeks before Christmas, my mom and I have a giant bake-off. We spend the whole weekend making cookies, brownies, squares, etc. Homemade goodies make great gifts for co-workers and friends. I haven't had a complaint yet!