From that battered old tree decoration to that beloved dessert dish your mom used to make every year, each of us has our own personal Christmas traditions that signify the holidays have finally arrived. We asked some of our favourite local celebrities to spill the beans on their very particular Yuletide traditions––those seasonal essentials that mean the world to them every December.

 

Zachary Stevenson (on stage around the region with his Holly Jolly Christmas concerts)

"Something my family has always done since I was a kid is to add written clues or riddles on each wrapped gift. The recipient of the gift has to make at least one guess before they’re permitted to open their present. As a kid, this could really test your patience. But now it’s one of my favourite Christmas traditions. We love writing clues so much that sometimes the clue precludes the gift!"

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Rebecca Bollwitt (founder of Miss 604, the longest-running, woman-owned, independent digital publication in Western Canada)

"Around the holidays, there are a few days in Downtown Vancouver when the city gets really quiet. The markets have closed, the shopping is finished and maybe even some snow has settled. One of our favourite traditions (see photo above) is to go for a walk at night to check out all the holiday lights downtown––from the waterfront in Coal Harbour to the many trees throughout the financial district and up to the art gallery. We'll wind our way from shore-to-shore, past St Paul's Lights of Hope, through the West End where heritage houses are aglow and down to English Bay. When we get home, we'll steam up some tamales from our local Latin foods market. We once had a legendary Christmas tamale adventure with John's family in Iowa, which in itself is an epic story, filled with laughter, love and nostalgia. Steaming up the house with those memories after exploring our festive town is a peak holiday tradition for us now."

 

Erick Lichte (artistic director of Chor Leoni, on stage with Christmas with Chor Leoni this December)

"My family only has one secret recipe: our Christmas stollen. I can't go into all the details but it eschews marzipan and includes pecans as well as dried cherries, apricots and raisins––all soaked in brandy. The recipe also has about twice the butter of others I have seen. I have said too much...

 

My holidays are busy with concert preparation and creating Chor Leoni's free annual Christmas concert film, but it isn’t Christmas unless the house is filled with the smell of baking stollen. The combination of browning bread and baking butter is like nothing else. I save the first real tasting of the stollen until Christmas Eve. And that flavour always takes me back to family, those far away and those passed on."

 

Krystle Dos Santos (on stage at the Firehall Arts Centre with A Very Merry Motown this December)

"One holiday tradition I uphold every year is to make a big pot of my family’s traditional Guyanese stew: Pepper Pot. It’s made with Cassareep syrup, hot peppers, orange peel and stewing beef. It gives the house an incredible smell and I make it with my dad’s signature challah bread on the side. It’s just not the holidays without it!"

 

JJ Lee (editor of the new anthology of true-life holiday short stories, Better This Year: More Tales from Christmas Survivors)

"[My Christmas tradition is] socks and underwear. My family knows it’s all I ever really want or need under the tree. Everything else I prefer to buy myself. But a sockless, jockless evergreen is personally devastating."

 

Will Woods (founder of Forbidden Vancouver Walking Tours, whose Holiday History and Hot Chocolate tour is running throughout the festive season)

"Coming from Britain, I remember many Christmas traditions similar to those in Canada. But there are some outliers: drinking in the pub until late on Christmas Eve, crackers on Christmas Day, standing freezing cold on the terraces watching Boxing Day football (soccer, ahem).

 

But I can't think of a more British (or, if I'm honest, cheesier) institution than [the singer] Cliff Richard. His holiday song “Mistletoe and Wine” came out when I was about nine, and it was a huge hit. When my kids ask me what Christmas was like when I was young, I tell them it was all about hearing this song everywhere you went!"

 

Lani Krantz (performer and production manager with Winter Harp, on stage around the region this December)

"For me, Christmas is all about music and lights. My parents, like me, are musicians so most of our Christmas traditions surrounded making music together in the living room or at candlelight church services and even at family carolling around the neighbourhood! Christmas Eve isn’t complete for me until I have a chance to sing/play my favourite traditional carols like “Silent Night” and “The Holly and the Ivy.”"

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Rachel Zottenberg (founder of the Weirdos Holiday Market, back for six dates this December)

"My parents came from different religions, so when I was growing up we were always half-celebrating holidays or inventing new ones (shoutout to the year they tried to make “Chronikah” happen and didn’t get the joke).

 

Around the age of ten, not having a Christmas tree really started to bother me. I wanted one badly. But my dad—coming from a Jewish family—would not budge. Absolutely no trees. One day, my mom and I were shopping at The Bay, and we wandered into a section filled with giant, gloriously tacky lawn decorations: Santa, Rudolph with the blinking nose, all of it. But it was Frosty who stole my heart––a massive, glowing, twice-my-height snowman who looked outrageously, unapologetically happy. And, crucially, he wasn’t a tree.

 

My mom and I instantly knew we had found the loophole.

 

We bought Frosty, brought him home and set him up in the living room in all his gaudy glory, surrounding him with presents. When my dad walked in from work, he was immediately blinded by the unnatural glow and started to protest. But, as we reminded him, he had only said no trees. That meant Frosty was technically fair game. Cut to 30-ish years later and my parents still put up Frosty in their living room every single holiday season. He’s gone through a few bulbs in his lifetime, of course, but honestly he just gets better with age. And when I moved into my own house, I immediately got my own Frosty...

 

I’m putting this into words for the first time––and yeah, it checks out that this is the little girl who grew up to create the Weirdos Holiday Market!"

 

Alan Pavlakovic (artistic director at the Improv Centre, presenting ‘Tis the Sitcom throughout the holiday season)

"At some point in her life, my mom picked up a unique recipe for easy cinnamon buns that start with simple frozen dinner rolls. Every Christmas Eve, she would prep the buns with sugars and spices and let them rise overnight. As the children woke up to open their stockings, Ma would be in the kitchen, heating the oven and getting our fresh cinnamon buns in. I remember whiffs of cinnamon, vanilla and fresh-baking bread wafting through the house as we unwrapped our gifts. After the first few items were unwrapped, our parents would stop us and we'd grab a plate of warm buns and return to the tree to eat and scope out the next parcel––always rinsing our sticky-sweet hands so as not get any guck on our recently acquired loot!

 

Over the years, that specific brand of dinner rolls became scarce and we would drive all over just to get one bag of the frozen essentials. One year, we decided to take a family vacation someplace warm. But the first question out of our mouths on December 25 was, “What no cinnamon buns?” We've made this a non-negotiable for our family's holidays now, and even if the location changes––Ma has now moved out of her house and my sister into one––we keep this family tradition alive. Hopefully for many more years to come!"

 

Do you have a particular Christmas tradition you uphold every year? Let us know via the form at the bottom of our Work With Us page––and we’ll post the best ones below.