(Music) Narrator: In the winter when the land is bleak, the wind stiff, the cold skies early dark.

That is when we most need the warmth of our traditions, the ones our parents or their grandparents brought with them when they arrived here carrying almost nothing else.

This is a celebration of small things, an ornament.

A recipe.

A Carol.

A prayer.

Words and objects that can call you home in a moment, whether you've wandered across the globe or settled in the neighborhood where you were raised their gifts.

The first and most enduring we ever received.

We've gathered them in a holiday scrapbook of stories and memories.

Each one is as unique as the family that made it.

Yet they're all connected, and they form a bridge across the generations.

A bridge that rests on our family's cornerstones.

Richard Paton: Christmas was laughter, I mean, Christmas was fun.

It's a wonderful thing when the whole families gathered around together.

And.

Richard Paton: Everybody's in a good mood because it's Christmas anyway and you're all feeling good about everything, really.

Michael Damas: But all have a big dinner at home in my father.

Invite all his friends.

That's the custom custom.

The Lebanese people invite someone to sit with them on the dining table and they'll have a dinner and then we go to church.

Peter Silverman: Hanukkah is always a family time.

Every night you'd like the menorah, so every kid would have.

We all have our own menorahs and every night you get a present and you play a little spinning game called dreidel with little chocolate coins.

So it's a holiday that was for kids was all fun.

It was all family and all fun.

It was.

It brings back really nice memories.

Narrator: Polish or Greek, Christian or Jew?

We have this in common.

The season begins when people gather.

Every winter holiday has, at its heart, an open home.

George Sarantou: A lot of people would come during the course of the day in the evening from different walks of life.

For example, my parents always invited the the elderly Greek men that never married.

Many of them never had families or anybody to visit with any relatives in Toledo.

They lived alone in rooming houses in downtown Toledo.

And those people look forward to this party every year because they probably got one of the best meals home cooked a course that they ever had.

Plus, they had a place to go on Christmas, which I'm sure was a lonely time for them.

Narrator: The tradition of hospitality is a candle in the window first kindled centuries ago in Ireland to welcome strangers.

It is a hot drink offered to carolers.

It is an extra place that a Polish dinner table left empty on Christmas Eve.

Anna Cios: It has to stay empty in case a person you know a lonely person appears at your door.

Then you have to invite him or her and share your supper with this person.

So you see it can mean different things for different people.

As a general rule is reserved for an unexpected visitor, but it can mean something else if you're mixing some with your family member is missing.

The year of 1981, when the martial law was introduced in Poland on December 13, and at that time my my brother was imprisoned for his political activities and there was a very memorable and sad Christmas, and that empty chair and empty played had a special significance for us.

Narrator: The kitchen where families gather and the holidays are.

Made.

Narrator: The sense that swirl from the stove, steam the window and mist the eye, evoking moments spent lingering over meals in the heart of the home.

In Poland, where holiday meals are elaborate and rich with symbolism.

Christmas Eve dinner begins when the first star appears in the night sky.

Tom Sorosiak: A mom used to say to us, You know, today we say to kids, You watch for Santa, he'll be coming.

Of course, we're always looking for the first star to appear in the East.

And it was, I think it was more of a way to get us out of the way and out of the kitchen and from snacking and so forth.

So everyone's looking for the first star and the beginning of the Gallia, which is the evening dinner, which was meatless.

And then it was meatless.

You would think, geez, there isn't a whole lot to eat with regards to meatless foods on Christmas Eve, but there were, needless to say, the hearing the soldier was there.

Then mom would always make pierogi, and she could make three kinds of my favorites a dry cottage cheese, mashed potatoes.

Or she could put the caboose to the cabbage inside the pierogi.

You could make prune soup.

Even a mushroom soup could be made.

And, of course, the plot.

That's the Polish coffee cake.

Those things were on the table, as well as real butter.

You know the amenities.

By the time you put all those things on a a meatless dinner table, it was really quite a bit of food.

Anna Cios: I remember making my first Christmas Eve supper and everybody left hungry, you know, after they were done.

I wasn't much of a cook.

Krzysztof Cios: My wife did her best to prepare the Christmas Eve stuff better and we had less traditional dishes.

So although we had twelve dishes, they were on their short side.

So even after eating twelve dishes, we are not very full.

It has improved since then.

So now we have wonderful meals.

Anna Cios: Thank you very much.

Narrator: Eastern European families often begin the Christmas meal by breaking a wafer of unleavened bread called a plastic.

Tom Sorosiak: It started with dad and he would take the wafer and and with that wafer, he would go to mom and wish you the best of health, and she would break off a piece and they would each have a half.

And with the all party, they then would share it with us, starting with the oldest, my brother and working its way down.

And again, we would embrace and kiss and wish each other healthy new year to come.

But.

Narrator: The Polish Vigilia is set on a table covered with straw placed there to recall the manger.

Tom Sorosiak: one of the things we did in our household, which we always look forward to as children was when the meal was over, you were to lift up the tablecloth and you could take out a piece of straw.

I find the end of the straw and pull it out, and the length of the straw was a measure of long life.

And good luck, as we'd say, stalwart and polish.

Well, she would always remind us to put long pieces of straw.

Her dad was going to sit.

So dad wasn't going to lose out on this wherever he was going to pull a piece of straw.

It was almost going to start at the other end of the table.

Narrator: In Italy, the Christmas Eve meal prepares the family to celebrate Christ's birth, like the Vigilia, it is often a meatless dinner.

Geneva Rodgers: The seven fishes, as my mother had explained to me, came about because of Christ feeding the multitudes with five loaves and two fishes.

And they came up to the number seven.

And what you do is you're eating fish and you're not eating major abstaining from meat because you are depriving yourself in preparation for the birth of the Bambino.

Right after midnight.

We had when I was growing up and continue on to have fishers like anchovy linguine with calamari smells back alive and not too much else around the seven fishes where the important thing and keeping in mind that we were sort of like depriving ourselves, I know that doesn't sound like we're depriving ourselves when we're going to eat seven fishes.

But you're only supposed to like taste them so that you can be sure and get the seven in.

So the thing that would ensure that you would have enough food to feed your family and friends because friends are very important.

For the coming year.

Narrator: Hanukkah commemorates a miracle that gave light for eight days to the Maccabees in their temple in the fourth century before Christ, in the way they prepared traditional foods.

Jewish families recall that miracle every year.

Peter Silverman: Food for Hanukkah is Hanukkah celebrates the miracle of oil in the lamp.

So the what it is is fried food, and the big fried food is potato pancakes, which is basically ground up.

Potatoes grind up onions, put in a little egg and baking soda, and you fry them.

Sharon Rappaport: The cooking of the lockers was very important to the cooking and eating it and the smell.

I mean, the smell in the house and the aroma that I remember reeking of potatoes for four days.

There's only one way to do it, and that is to grease the potatoes by hand.

I do not use the Cuisinart and I whenever I have done potato pancakes, I have done them right now.

There's kind of a little thing in terms of you have to get some knuckle in there to make them kind of taste good a little bit in natural and in, you know, even though I may talk about, you know, reaching for days.

I mean, it wasn't a nasty kind of, you know, being a difference.

It was it was kind of nice.

I mean, it was good to eat it, good to smell and pleasant, pleasant.

Singer 1: And I've been clean, the gamut being bly to Alex feeling intranasal in spades.

And I always delayed all that.

Either the ladle or authorizes the ladle today to learn that all this filling in the needle in some space.

Peter Silverman: Now the good part was they had this little dreidel game where you spin this top for Hebrew letters around it and you either toss a coin into the pot or you take a coin out anyone who lands on and the usually chocolate coins.

So you would get to a lot of chocolate.

None.

Narrator: Jimoh shin Hey, the letters on a dreidel top stand for the words a great miracle happened there.

The letter that appears when the top stopped spinning dictates a player's fortune that none do nothing.

Jimo take all the candy shin.

Add a candy to the pot.

Hey, take half the candies in the pot.

Around the time that they celebrate Christmas, some African-Americans also observe Kwanzaa, a cultural holiday with food and tradition rooted in the African harvest.

Msimbi Adri-Shuman: I coincides at the time of the year when actually in Africa was or is harvest time to celebrate from December the 26th, and it goes on for the whole week to give the community time to be able to focus on the seven principles of Kwanzaa, which are unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, purpose, creativity and faith in God.

The Wonderful Family Celebration Time.

Rahwae Shuman: Tonight, we're going to say a libation which is an African prayer to our ancestors.

And just think and reflect on the meaning of funds and talk about its principles.

And we're going to recognize all of our ancestors from beginning to end, beginning with Nama King of Ethiopia, Egypt.

Many aha, though, sir.

Threats on the seventh day.

There's a caramel or a feast.

And usually people eat all the foods that they like, usually soul foods and some African foods.

Collard greens and rice, yams, coconut fruits, meats, things like that.

Msimbi Adri-Shuman: Kwanzaa means many things to me, but basically it means a time of commemorating our heritage, celebrating our culture, as well as giving thanks to God for the many wonderful things that he has given to us.

Narrator: The recipes for our winter feast come down through the generations from hand to hand.

Mother to daughter, grandfather to grandson.

They come and pinches, dashes and hands full as hard to measure as the love that seasons them.

Lina Barrera: My sister in laws and I every year get together to continue the tradition of making smiling.

At during Christmas.

Literally making for some important things.

Lina Barrera: It's the same recipe over 100 years old.

Yes, it's amazing.

There's that's precise measurements.

It's just a little handful of this, a handful that.

Sam Rodriguez: We, as kids, you know, we would help, you know, getting the husk together.

We would soak the high school would clean them out.

We would help put the spread of the masa on the on the husk themselves.

And then we made like a little progress line, you know, just everybody just did something just went right along and and you know, they're going to have to balance that day.

Judge Joseph Flores: My mother would always make the tamales from round one, and the whole family would get involved all the way, from father to two mother to two daughters to son and they all.

And by the time you sat down to eat, you could always you could truly say that this had been prepared by the family, not by mom , not by dad.

Judge Robert Penn: My mother will start early in December.

Preparing for Christmas because she knew that we wouldn't have a lot of presents, so she knew that the focus will be on food.

She would save her butter and the milk and eggs, and all of the other ingredients which went into baking cookies, pies and cakes.

Phil Luetke: Well, my mother baked cookies.

She was German German background she made.

I wouldn't even be able to spell as she made a cookie called.

And this is German spring release.

I wish I could say it right.

I wish, frankly, was a square cookie.

She made it once a year and had aniseed.

It had a kind of an unusual taste.

It was baked in there and then she would before she put it into the oven, she stamped it with these little cookie cutters that would make a pattern.

And I'm telling you, man, they were hard.

You had to.

You had a dunk.

You know, you know, at dunking is the dunking was very big, that it was a real art and which prairies you had a dunk to make a soft a boy.

Once you got that soft, it was good, but otherwise you could to kill the man with one of those cookies.

George Sarantou: My mother would quote cook up a storm, she made hundreds of pieces of Greek pastries and she was start on this project right around Thanksgiving.

So when we were, we were children.

I mean, she would have the ovens going every day after school, and she would be wrapping things very securely with Saran wrap in foil and putting them in aluminum pots and pans.

And then in our basement, we had this huge metal table that was set up and mom would store all the pastries in the basement.

Well, what mom probably figured out after a while was that all four of us would go down to the basement periodically between Thanksgiving and Christmas and just unwrapped very carefully and help ourselves to those Greek pastries, probably at 4:00 right after school.

Manos Paschalis: one of the things that every family makes is a special bread during the Christmas time, it's a lot, so my sweet bread that they put a coin in the bread.

This is a traditional school vacillated.

That's how the bread is bowl with Smiths Kings Pie.

George Sarantou: Well, everybody got a designated piece of that Greek sweet bread.

Plus, you would also cut a piece of bread for whatever your dad did for a living.

And in my case, it was my dad's tavern, his business.

You also cut a piece of bread for the house, meaning the welfare of the home that you lived in because it was very important to us and whoever got the coin in their bread.

It was said to be the lucky charm.

In other words, you were this coming year will be a very special year for you.

Manos Paschalis: The one that it's in my mind always.

I was probably seven years old that I remember, and that was that was the Christmas that I got the silver coin into the vice lobby day into that pie.

And that was the most exciting hires since I was the king that day.

Geneva Rodgers: From December six until Christmas was the period of time in which the great preparation almost the entire month of December was set aside as a preparation for the birth of the Bambino, which started polishing the house till it was just extremely clean.

Narrator: Cleaning the house for the holidays and Christian homes It's done not only to prepare for friends and family, but to welcome a baby as well in a manger at the center of a nativity scene.

Geneva Rodgers: We were given a nativity scene, I think probably I don't remember what age I was, but very, very young.

The one that went into my bedroom, and that's so I could play with it so that I knew who Mary was.

I knew who Joseph was, the baby.

I knew the three wise men came.

I knew that there were shepherds there, and you could begin to tell and relive the whole story of the birth of Christ as you began to play with these little figurines.

Tom Sorosiak: The Sroubek is a very old Polish word for the manger, and we never put the infant Jesus in the Zubac until Christmas Day.

So Mom prepared the manger with the scenes and it was almost like an enactment of a of a play as we prepared for Christmas.

You know, she'd go get some strong.

She put all the figurines out and then then on Christmas Day, we would see Joseph and Mary waiting in the manger with the cows and the sheep around.

But on Christmas morning, then someone myself, brother, sister was able to put the infant.

Inside the inside the manger.

Narrator: The scent of flowers and evergreen boughs.

Candlelight reflected in glass.

Holiday decorations feast the senses and warm the heart.

When the land is frozen, they help us celebrate life.

And when the days are short and dark, they bring light.

The Hanukkah menorah, the Hanukkah has nine candles, one for each night, the oil burned in the temple and one called the Shamash or servant used to light the others.

(Singer 2) Narrator: For Kwanzaa, two candles illuminate a meditation each evening.

The Kinara holds seven candles one black, three red and three green.

The candles represent Kwanzaa seven principles unity, self-determination, cooperative economics, creativity, collective work and responsibility.

Purpose and faith.

Every child who lies beneath a Christmas tree gazing up through its sparkling branches, peers back hundreds of years.

Our first Christmas trees arrived with German soldiers who fought in the American Revolution.

And the Victorian English gave us our style of decorating them.

Helen Duffy: In July, my father would order ornaments from Germany.

We had the most beautiful Christmas ornaments.

And he sold Christmas trees, but before he sold any, he'd go through the bags.

And the most beautiful one he would bring home.

Richard Paton: One of the things my family was does to this day is all our Christmas cards to each other are all kind of pushed into the branches of the tree.

So I remember this tree and there would be kind of, you know, the baubles and the decorations and everything hanging off it and and then little presents around the base.

It's a it's something I never forget.

Geneva Rodgers: We brought home a lot of ornaments that we made in school.

And then my sisters and I would sit around and make sort of like chains out of construction paper.

I mean, you would just spend the whole evening doing that and you would put that on and very, very proud.

It didn't matter if it didn't match.

It didn't matter that the colors didn't coordinate.

It mattered that you were sitting with your sisters and an evening and you made it and you were made it to put on the Christmas tree in preparation for Christmas Day.

Phil Luetke: So a lot of the decorations were handmade.

We used to load it up today that they don't load up a tree so much, you can see the greenery, but we'd put this tinsel.

We used to call this kind of stuff from the stuff that hung down and lights and way back.

I understand people.

Actually, this was before our time would put lighted candles on a tree.

I imagine that.

Michael Damas: It was a remarkable thing, and see all those candles burned as high as we've seen in all the kids around the fire here, there's a fire there and then step the hands and try to put out the fire and everybody jammed around and it was kind of exciting they.

Phil Luetke: So I'd say the Christmas tree is the one thing that I couldn't do without the least I could do without the food and the gifts and everything else, but not the Christmas to be pretty tough to do without a Christmas tree, even over there during the war in Italy, we some of the guys, but they went out and got a little tree of some kind of bringing into the tent and have a tree where a tree of sorts in the tent.

I can't remember my whole life ever not having a Christmas tree that Christmas.

Helen Duffy: My brother was in Germany.

He was in the battle of the bulge and my mother missed him, so.

So she kept the Christmas tree up all around until he finally came home in the spring and the Christmas tree was there with all the ornaments, everything on, but no needles all around the tree they had dropped to the .

Flaw and his guests were.

We're still there waiting, and he said to my mother, I got your message.

He knew how much he'd been missed.

Narrator: To remember miracles that happened thousands of years ago.

We give one another gifts at the holidays, and the joy that each gift imparts is its own small miracle.

The reason that finding and offering the perfect present, no matter how modest, will alway Richard Paton: Like many families, I suppose we did have traditional things, little things that we would give each other every year.

No, I mean, I buy my mom and my sister buys my dad a certain type of candy of chocolates.

Every year I think I think I could buy my sister and I could buy them.

Gifts costing 1,000,000, and if we forgot the traditional chocolates, I think they'd be devastated, I think they keep the million.

You know, that type of thing that that's been going on for, well, more than 40 years now.

Tom Sorosiak: I recall the gift giving, you know, Christmas to us today is is very gift giving oriented and I thought back about it, even I was in that spirit.

I wanted to give gifts to the family members, mom and dad.

So I had saved money and dad was always there to to say, Do you need a couple dollars?

And I always remembered where I went and got my gifts.

I would go to Hank's pharmacy on the corner of Lagrange and Austin, and I would usually buy my mother talcum powder he would have behind at the pharmacy.

So talcum powder for her mom or even at that time, I could go to grants if I wanted to go downtown Christmas shopping.

Phil Luetke: He had them in Toledo.

Big department stores downtown going downtown was the big deal before Christmas, and these department stores will have whole floors devoted to toys.

I go down with my mother and we go to the Lions store will sell and Cox Lamb sons, turkeys, turkeys was just a regular festival.

They had these cheeses out in the aisles and the place the smells alone would would be worth the trip.

What's closest to being at a Christmas festival, which could ever, possibly.

Helen Duffy: My father gave all of us $0.50 and we could buy each other a ten cent gift.

My mother and my father and there were four children, so we had $0.50 for it and $0.10 per person.

And my brother who always watched his pennies, my younger brother would go through the dime store and he'd buy the most that he could get for his money, so one Christmas he got my sister three shot glasses and nobody drank it in the house.

But that's what he could get for a dime.

three of them.

So he bought those so he'd have the most and cheapest, even though it was no value.

Judge Robert Penn: one year we got a wig and I thought it was a mistake.

I thought the Santa Claus had meant to leave an affluent family, his house down the highway from us, which was a white family.

They had money and they would get a lot of nice toys.

And I thought perhaps Santa Claus had made a mistake and had really intended to leave this wagon down here.

And he made a mistake and nothing else.

And I was almost afraid to get on the wagon and get outside to have them see it because I thought they might suggest it.

Will Santa Claus love this here by mistake?

Please give it to me.

Norville Rappaport: My dad was a tailor.

And.

Tradition that he came from was that you would sew up a bag made of a scrap piece of fabric, and this bag was to contain the kid guilt that you receive.

Usually what he did was just give it once.

And there were several coins.

I don't think there was even $0.50 worth in the bag for the entire.

It was one time only.

And that that was it.

But it was contained in that bag so that you could you could change it.

I mean, that was important.

Sharon Rappaport: When I was a little girl, I remember standing by the kitchen stove, and I remember that's where we lit our Seneca Menorah on the kitchen stove, and then we would get my brother and I would each get a quarter a night.

And when, when, when I had children, I kind of developed the same thing.

We each lit our own menorah or the family menorah or two, and then they got a quarter a night.

It was after a few years and once they got a little bit older and once their friends got presents, then then maybe they got a present, but they still got their quarter and they.

Richard Paton: You could ask me what I got, and I wouldn't be able to tell you, I don't remember the gifts.

I remember this the feeling.

I remember the fun.

I remember the laughter.

I remember the bundling up with scarves and what we used to call bobblehead, which was knitted hats with a little bubble on the top that every Richard Paton: kid has, you know, and going out on on a Christmas afternoon after lunch, that's the kind of the events that the.

Thank traditions, I suppose, but that's what made it special to me.

Geneva Rodgers: After I got married and started my own family and carrying on a lot of the traditions, one of the things that I changed was the gift giving.

And I think probably I went overboard and I began to give many, many more gifts than what should be given at that time.

And so I think realizing that I'm kind of making a little turn around back again to my roots, realizing that my parents were very right in teaching us that the gifts weren't the important thing.

Narrator: There are those who say that the reasons for our celebrations each year grow more difficult to find beneath a litter of wrapping paper and tinsel.

Yet when the quiet part of the day comes midnight or morning, it is clear that many still hear a call to worship that has rung without diminishing through the generations.

The with.

nine days before Christmas.

Mexican families reenact the arrival of Mary and Joseph in Bethlehem with nightly processions known as La Posada the end.

On Christmas Eve, Los Posadas end when the infant Jesus is placed in his manger and churches across the city filled with the grandchildren and great grandchildren of the immigrants who built them.

Tom Sorosiak: The mass was very, very important.

Midnight Mass and called pastoral care began at 1130.

The choir would arrive at eleven and begin singing the coal in the Polish Christmas carols.

Religious Christmas carols we weren't singing.

Here comes Santa Claus.

We were singing in the celebration.

Of the birth of Christ.

Did he not shoot?

Did she?

She is thinking, Oh, gee, oh.

This.

Then you have your sea fishing.

You oh.

Oh.

Services.

Narrator: In the music that echoes in churches across the city on Christmas, as the voices rise and blend, we hear past and future come together, children learning a new tongue, grand grandparents preserving the old family, singing their traditions and words and melodies as pure and simple as the mysteries they celebrate.

Sam Rodriguez: I still have to say that one of my favorite is Saturday night.

You know, and I just the way you singing in Spanish sounds a little different than in English, you know?

You know, much of that bass, you know, it's just a nice flavor to it.

You know, it feels peaceful, you know?

It sounds more peaceful to me than silent night.

You know, much of that bass.

Real, peaceful.

Our first Christmas here, we came here in April of 69 and meeting her family, I didn't know there was any Hispanics in Toledo.

You know, it's just one of the things we came here and they lived in the trilby area and one of the uncles lived off in Michigan, in Petersburg.

And so we all went there for Christmas and we sang Silent Night.

And I tell you, it gave me goosebumps because I I shot back and I just remembered, you know, my aunt and my mom, you know, they were all they all sang, too.

And of course, it was in Spanish, you know, but it didn't sound.

It sounded beautiful.

I mean, it's just like if I was home just in a different language, you know?

Phil Luetke: I'll tell you how my my dad did it and they still do this, and some churches, they he would turn up, they would turn out all the lights.

Well, this was the last song on the agenda and the organist would start singing playing that silent night and everybody would sing the three verses.

And everybody, practically everybody knew that song by heart and they would sing it in the dark was just those Christmas tree lights.

And I'm telling you there wasn't a dry eye in the house, and we were actually seeing those in Germany on Christmas Eve, from the balcony upstairs at Old Church on Belmont, and Holly can still see it, and I could still hear the music.

(Choir Singing) When they arrived here carrying so little else, our parents or their grandparents brought with them these wonderful gifts.

They cannot be unwrapped.

Cannot be held.

They are precious and fragile, yet strong enough to bind families across time and distance ours to enjoy only for a while and then to give away again.

For that is how we keep them, these holiday traditions that bring us home.

Geneva Rodgers: I have never been away from my mother and father's when they died.

OK. And that was very difficult.

It was extremely difficult because my parents were such an important part of the celebration of Christmas.

My mother and father taught me so much about the religious aspects of the holiday along with the cooking, and I could see my mother cooking and baking, and that was very difficult.

But what made me get through the holiday was that if my mother had entrusted all these traditions and all these recipes in me, I had to do it to pass it on to my children and now my grandchildren.

I guess maybe that's what nice about traditions.

Not much of some change.

You may have to adapt some here and there, but you do continue to do the same thing and everybody is very, very comfortable with that.

George Sarantou: Today, families do not have the time that they used to have, but we we really make a concerted effort to make time, especially at Christmas, to be together.

And as a result, it's changed, so you have a lot of wonderful memories from the past.

But I don't regret any of the Christmases I have today with my wife and with my children because I think they're better than ever.

I think we have a life that's better than ever.

Thank God my parents were able to come to this country as immigrants.

They came here with nothing, and they left a nice legacy, a wonderful legacy of prosperity and good health and good family life.

And that's really what's important.

And I really look forward to every holiday at Christmas because that's what we learned from our parents, and that continues.

It's not the number of gifts.

It's not the price of those gifts.

It's just being together as a family.