How we celebrate away from the table.

While deeply rooted in spiritual beginnings, many seasonal celebrations put the spotlight on a special meal.This month, we asked East Bay residents to tell us about other kinds of holiday traditions.

“Every year we visit the merry-go-round at Tilden Park during the week of the winter solstice, sometimes with friends or visiting relations [or] just the immediate family. We ride the carousel, admire the lights and the model train display, and pick out a new ornament or two for our tree at home. We do usually sip hot chocolate, too, but that’s not the main point. We haven’t missed a year since our first child’s first December, and he’s 10 now.”
—Holly McCroskey, Albany

Honoring family: Darlene Tenes poses with her mother, Lily Tenes (left), and her aunt, Carol Rivera (right).

“My mother has a lot of Nativity scenes throughout the house during Christmas; the one thing missing is the baby Jesus. Then on Christmas Eve she pulls out her hidden babies and has the young children put the baby Jesus in his crib. She likes to place all her nativity scenes up by Thanksgiving weekend but doesn’t put the baby in until he is born on Christmas Eve. It also ties into Advent, which is a time of waiting and anticipation. She also sets up an altar in the living room for Día de los Muertos. She is very Catholic and likes both our American and Mexican cultural traditions.”
—Darlene Tenes, San Jose

Laila Ibrahim.

“For Solstice, my family and our neighbors (three families in all) make a spiral out of redwood tree boughs with tea lights. We take turns walking into the middle of the spiral talking about our year—the highs and lows individually and for the world. Then we talk about what we are looking forward to or wishing for in the new year as we walk back out of the spiral.”
—Laila Ibrahim, Berkeley

Lon Sarver.

“For the last 20 years, we’ve had a Yule sleepover. We usually have 20 to 30 people over. We set up a Yule tree, which is much like a Christmas tree. We begin by lighting a candle at sunset, symbolically taking the last bit of light from the old year. Around midnight or as close to the middle of the dark period as we can, we sing Yuletide carols. We share with each other the things that we hope to carry over into the new year. Then we write down all our hopes and wishes for the new year on scraps of paper and stuff them into pinecones. At dawn, we light a fire in the fireplace, throw the pinecones in and let the smoke carry our wishes up to heaven.”
—Lon Sarver, Hayward

Ellen DiNucci.

“On Christmas and Thanksgiving, my husband and I always hike. This year, we are implementing a ceremony to honor deceased loved ones. My mother passed away in 2010 from pancreatic cancer. I miss her dearly and thought of her when considering this new tradition. We’ll probably do a little ceremony to invite her on our hike and meal, and to have her hang out with us throughout the day. The big thing is to recognize her, let her know we think about her a lot, can feel that her presence is still with us, and to have fun. I know that other cultures recognize their deceased loved ones and have a place for them in their world. I am pretty sensitive and when I tune into my mother I can feel her and her peace and joy.”
—Ellen DiNucci, Palo Alto

Alex Eaves.

“As we all know, with any holiday season, but especially the winter ones, there comes more stuff. Over the past few years, I’ve decided to reverse that tradition and get rid of stuff instead. Some people wait until the spring to do their cleaning, but what better time to move things out of your life than when a new year is about to start? So, what do you do with all of the stuff you find yourself not needing? Well, if you’re the gift-giving type, they can make some excellent reuse gifts. I tend to do a lot of eBay-selling around the holidays. However you do it, though, a tradition of parting ways with stuff is a great way to start the new year with more of a clean slate and clear head.”
—Alex Eaves, Berkeley

Dory Weinstein.

“Growing up in southern California, it was usually still pretty warm around [Rosh Hashanah and Chanukah] so holidays were a great time to get out of the house. My dad would always take me hiking in Wildwood Park near our home. It wasn’t really much of a forest, but I loved looking for animals along the stream. Living in northern California means that it’s much easier to find a real forest than it was when I lived around Los Angeles, so now I can make up for lost time. After dinner, my brother and I sometimes drive around looking for wildlife.”
—Dory Weinstein, Pleasant Hill

Billee Sharpe.

“I’ve always valued the aesthetics of handcrafted items. As the wife of an artist and a writer myself, [I’ve found] limited funds have always made us creative. Apart from the embellishments for the tree, we make wreaths from holly, evergreen, and mistletoe. Often Christmas tree vendors will give you extra branches for free. Our themes are quite traditional, but we are not practicing Christians so we draw in any influences that we resonate with. We have a little Ganesh ornament for the tree, too.”
—Billee Sharpe, San Francisco

Dan Howard.

“My dad is from Kansas and my mom is Taiwanese; I lived in Taiwan for a while growing up. One of the holidays that I remember vividly was Lantern Festival every November. We would always make or purchase lanterns shaped like different things—dragons, butterflies, traditional paper lanterns, ships, etc.—and parade down the street. People would attach riddles to their lanterns or adults [would tell] riddles to kids and offer rewards for correct guesses. One year my parents decided to have a traditional American Thanksgiving meal and to invite our relatives to share in the novel experience. After several phone calls and meeting a man in a dark alley with a large sum of money, we finally acquired our Thanksgiving turkey. My Taiwanese relatives came over and politely sampled the food but didn’t eat much. ‘Do Americans always eat their food mashed up into a paste like this?’ ‘Americans put cinnamon in their desserts?!’ (In Chinese cuisine, cinnamon is a spice only used in meaty dishes.) Needless to say, the meal was not a big hit for them.”
—Dan Howard, Pleasant Hill

“One Yule tradition is the all-night vigil on the longest night of the year. We stay up together, burn candles, chant, tell stories, ultimately do about anything we have to to stay awake. It’s a time to use up all the bits and stubs of candles that pagans accumulate. One name for this is the ‘Mothernight,’ with the idea that you are holding vigil as the mother labors through the night to give birth to the young god at dawn. Then we go out to greet the first sight of the sun. And then to bed.”
—Brianna Tracy, Albany

Step by step: Angela James and her family take an annual photo at the top of the Lyon Broadway stairway in San Francisco.

“When our son was about 10 months old we took a day trip to San Francisco and shot an impromptu photo of our young family at the top of the Lyon Broadway Stairway overlooking the Bay, Palace of Fine Arts, and Alcatraz in the distance. That was in 1989. We have gone every year to the same spot and shot the same photo of our family together, including me pregnant with our daughter. My son is now 22 and my daughter is 20. We have sent this as our Christmas card ever since and have all of the photos in our entry framed for all to enjoy. This has been a huge hit with family and friends who expect the updated photo every year.”
—Angela James, Los Gatos