What’s your favorite Christmas memory?

Alexander Hubenko from Ukraine holds his 15-month-old daughter, Amalia, as he lights a candle in the grotto of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, West Bank, Dec. 15. The church is built on what is believed to be the site where Jesus was born. Sister Maria Goretti Thuy Nguyen, OP, said she was set to spend Christmas in Bethlehem with other sisters from her congregation to celebrate Christmas, as well as her 25th anniversary of religious life. (CNS Photo)

HOUSTON — As the holidays wind down with the coming of the new year, take some time to look back and recall cherished Christmas memories.

If you haven’t had your fill of Christmas movies — maybe there really is a limit to how many times we can watch “A Christmas Story” or “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” — consider sharing some of your favorite Christmas memories with loved ones at your next meal or over a favorite warm drink.

Sometimes these old family stories, memories that make up the bricks of the past, are funnier, livelier and even more entertaining when others help you remember exactly just how that night really happened. So, what are some of your favorite Christmas memories?

We asked this question to several Catholics around the Archdiocese, including priests, sisters and lay people, and their answers took us all over the globe with Christmas cheer.

A festival of lights
Sister Maria Goretti Thuy Nguyen, OP, an associate director with Archdiocesan Office of Evangelization and Catechesis, fondly looked back at her youth, growing up in Vietnam.

Her parish, Giáo Xu Tân Mai in Biên Hòa City in Vietnam, would hold a big contest, inviting ministries and organizations to create Nativity scenes on the parish campus.

“It was a festival of lights and Nativity,” she said. “Each organization and ministry would come up with their own unique idea to decorate a Nativity scene with Christmas lights, with every one trying their best. Each one was so creative in their own decoration, and we would walk around and see each special Nativity scene.”

She remembered how the church would sparkle with Christmas lights, as more than 20 Nativity scenes had a different design with materials, such as bamboo, plants and grass – many having an Oriental influence.

“It’s such a special festival; I wish we had it in America so people could walk around their own parish and see so many Nativity scenes,” she said.

But one thing that hasn’t changed is how busy she becomes during the Christmas season with preparing for liturgies and music with her congregation at the Dominican Sisters of Mary Immaculate Province, which has three convents in Houston.

Since first joining a children’s choir at age 12, Sister Nguyen said she studied music and is now leading her community with music at the convent.

“My whole life, Christmas time has always been busy,” she said, chuckling.

But this year, Sister Nguyen looked towards a different busyness: she was set to travel to the Holy Land and visit Jerusalem and Bethlehem, where Jesus was born, in anticipation of her 25th anniversary of religious life. There, she’d join her classmates for a “holy pilgrimage” for a different experience of Christmas.

“I have had a Vietnamese experience of Christmas, the U.S. experience, and now this will be my first time to experience Christmas in Bethlehem in the Holy Land,” she said.

Sister Nguyen also recalled how difficult it was to spend her first Christmas away from home during her novitiate. It would be more than two years before she could go back to her family and that home sparkling parish for Christmas.

“I still remember, after the Christmas program at the convent, I just burst out crying so loud in the restroom. In that first year of my novitiate, I cried so much at Christmas,” she said. But 27 years later, she said the convent has become her second home and second family.
“I have my sisters around and [they] feel like home, so I don’t miss my family as much, but I do call home on the holidays,” she said. “So now it’s not as bad as that first year away from home.”

No power, just fun

Father Eduardo Rivera, CSB, remembered how his family didn’t need electricity to make Christmas memorable.

On a trip to his grandparents’ house for Christmas, an ice storm knocked out power for several days.

“I remember using flashlights and candles when we were opening our Christmas presents,” he said. “Every Christmas, we would go to Mass, play lotería, eat tamales, open presents and watch movies. Although we did not have electricity, we still had a wonderful Christmas because we were together as a family.”

Those tamales, iconic of many Latino Christmas meals, and buñuelos are Father Rivera’s favorite meal, he said.

He remembered watching his grandmother and mother spread masa on corn husks, part of a whole day-long process to cook tamales.
“My family would have so many tamales at this time of the year that we would eat them for breakfast, lunch and dinner,” and by mid-January, they’d have eaten every form of tamale possible: fried, baked, steamed, with eggs, with refried beans and on tostadas.

“I did not help make the tamales, but I definitely helped to eat them,” he said.

Now a new parochial vicar at St. Anne Catholic Church in Houston, Father Rivera said his first Christmas as a priest was challenging.
Ordained in 2020 during the pandemic, Father Rivera wasn’t sure how many people to expect at Christmas Mass, but he was surprised at how many people eagerly came, especially after time in quarantine and isolation.

“My first Christmas as a priest was a glimmer of hope during a tough year,” he said.

Traditions from the islands

For Sally Reyes, program assistant for Prince of Peace Catholic Church’s Mercy Ministry in northwest Houston, Christmas memories bring sounds of traditional Filipino songs and smells of Filipino cuisine.

Her family would be woken up by the band playing in her church’s plaza in Quezon City, where she’d later hear the choir singing Christmas songs during the Simbang Gabi liturgies at Our Lady of Lourdes Church. These novena Masses anticipated the Christmas celebration, each held in the early morning hours.

After Mass, she’d join her family in that same plaza for snacks and sweet ginger tea, followed by a short five-minute walk back home in the cool morning breeze, giving her and her siblings the chance to enjoy the neighborhood’s “colorful blinking lights” and different shapes of parols, or handmade lanterns, hanging in every house, she said.

For Reyes, she looked forward to the Noche Buena dinner, usually held after Midnight Mass, when all her uncles, aunties, cousins and grandparents visited her house for a delicious feast of ham; pancit palabok, a rice noodle dish; lechon (roast pig); queso de bola, a Filipino yellow cheese staple; pan de sal; fresh lumpia, a kind of crepe with stir-fried vegetable fillings; chicken macaroni salad; and leche flan.

She’d help her mom prepare the leche flan, a kind of Filipino custard, with its painstaking process of preparing condensed milk and egg yolks, straining them and pouring them over molds lined with caramelized sugar, which are then steamed, a time-honored recipe that results in an incredibly silky-smooth flan.

After the meal, Christmas gifts would be opened, and children would be sent to bed while the older folks would enjoy hot chocolate and reminisce about the past.

Then a few hours later, her mother would wake her up and dress her in their finest Christmas clothes and take them to visit their godparents’ houses to ask for “Mano, po” (Tagalog for ‘hand, please’) and kiss their hand or take the back of the godparent or elders’ hand and touch it to their foreheads, a significant sign of respect from children to elders in Filipino culture. In return, their godparents would share their aguinaldo, or Christmas gift.

A night of revelry and prayer

In Lagos, Nigeria, where Father Ekenedilichkwu “Jude” Ezuma grew up, located on the Gulf of Guinea in west Africa, Christmas revelry and celebrations also started before Christmas Day.

In Nigeria’s largest city, Father Ezuma recalled his younger years, when he’d join his family for Midnight Mass, usually called the Christmas Vigil, then also meet his friends after for a large street party that would happen nearby.

He remembered the music, dancing and fireworks, and how it’s the one night a year that kids could stay up all night, but with a catch: they still had to go to Mass the next day on Christmas Day.

He and his friends would light firecrackers around the neighborhood, some on the ground, others on wires in the air, sometimes dangerously close to catching the neighborhood on fire, he recalled with a laugh.

On Christmas Day, his friends and family would also gather for a big meal that’s not too different than a Thanksgiving meal in the U.S.; there’d be turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes and such, he said. But there’s also a special Nigerian Christmas meal, boiled rice with tomato sauce with chicken or beef.

“We’d call it Christmas chicken,” he said. “As kids, you can go visit neighbors and uncles, and everywhere they’d give you food.”
He also remembered how he’d debut his new Christmas clothes gifted to him by his parents, like other children.

Years later, as a newly ordained priest in 2011, Father Ezuma found himself far away from his family for the holidays, like many other clergy and consecrated men and women.

While it was difficult at the start of his priesthood, “that has long changed” as he now finds his home and second family in his parish at Holy Family Parish in Galveston and Bolivar, where he is pastor.

Celebrating Christmas with his parishioners and their unique traditions brings him closer to them, he said.

“It all gives me joy,” he said. “In a way, as they call [me] Father, as a pastor, as a priest, I feel like I’m with my family — my Church family.”†