UC Davis students reflect on holiday festivities, recipes and memories
By EMME DUNNING — features@theaggie.org
Holidays are a time to reconnect with family and friends near and far. As Thanksgiving kicks off the holiday season, many students travel to reunite with loved ones; For some Aggies, travel makes the holiday season look just a little bit different.
Iain Kennedy, a fourth-year economics major, heads across the pond almost every holiday season. The senior was born and raised in England until he was 10 and still has close family in Scotland, where his family gathers for December festivities.
“I’ve spent pretty much every single Christmas and New Year in the [United Kingdom],” Kennedy said.
The holiday season in Scotland’s capital of Edinburgh is rich with its own special traditions that residents know and love. For the Kennedy family, Christmas time conjures up memories of snooker, a game similar to pool, murder mysteries on the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and good food.
Kennedy also raves about the New Year’s Eve celebration in the city. Commonly referred to as Hogmanay in Scotland, New Year’s Eve is a time for celebration and community gathering, something that Kennedy has witnessed first hand.
“In Edinburgh, they have a massive block party and there [are] thousands of people on the streets,” Kennedy said. “Right when midnight strikes, there are fireworks over the castle. You all cross hands and you sing Auld Lang Syne.”
For Gael Ibrahim Bagby-Fonseca, a UC Davis alum with a Bachelor of Arts in sociology, family is also a central part of the holiday season. Bagby-Fonseca celebrates an unconventional Thanksgiving, heading down to visit family in Mexico for the traditionally American holiday.
“Thanksgiving is a super American holiday, but I have family in Mexico and we go and visit every November,” Bagby-Fonseca said.
For their family, creating new traditions and spending time together are what make the day truly special.
“When we’re over there they cook octopus and a bunch of other stuff that’s not turkey,” Bagby-Fonseca said. “It’s just a celebration of family and giving thanks.”
Caden Velasquez, a UC Davis alum with a Bachelor of Arts in international relations, also has experience with travel during the holidays. Velasquez and his family often moved around in his upbringing, and their Christmas celebrations and traditions shifted with these moves. Despite many changes, one thing has stayed the same.
“We would rarely be in the same place for the holidays, but the one thing that did remain consistent every year was being surrounded by my family,” Velasquez said.
For his family, food is an integral part of festivities. Velasquez recounted traditional Venezuelan meals that his family has made around the holidays including pan de jamon and, most important to their family traditions, hallacas.
“We would all get together — and this was an entire day endeavor — we would make hallacas,” Velasquez said. “We’d spend the whole day sourcing all the materials. We cook the masa and the meat, and we prepare everything on a long table.”
Hallacas are a corn-based dough with a tamale-like filling. The unique dish can include ingredients such as olives, capers and raisins and are typically cooked in a banana leaf wrapping.
“We end up making hundreds of them, but we never keep more than 10% of them,” Velasquez said. “The purpose of making them is to give them all away. We’ll package up hundreds of them and give them away to friends, family and neighbors.”
Velasquez expressed that a little can go a long way toward creating memorable family traditions, noting two things that always made his holidays special.
“We’d always have family, and we’d always have good food.”
Written by: Emme Dunning — features@theaggie.org
