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In this episode of The A to Z English Podcast, Xochitl and Jack discuss their favorite Christmas traditions.
Transcript:
00:00:00
Jack
You’re listening to the A-Z English podcast.
00:00:14
Jack
Welcome to the A to Z English podcast. My name is Jack and I am here with my co-host social. And today we are going to do a quick talk episode where we just discuss a topic. And today’s question is what’s your favorite family Christmas tradition?
00:00:33
Jack
And so, so I’ll let I’ll start with you first. What’s your your favorite family Christmas tradition?
00:00:40
Xochitl
Well, Jack, I would say my favorite family Christmas.
00:00:43
Xochitl
Well, I have two, so I’ll go over both briefly. I think for my American side, my favorite is probably making sugar cookies with my grandma in the US, we have that idea or the myth.
00:00:59
Xochitl
Myth that Santa comes to house and leaves presents and the children are supposed to leave milk and cookies out for Santa as a snack when he stops by your house. So.
00:01:08
Jack
Right.
00:01:13
Xochitl
We would always.
00:01:13
Xochitl
Make cookies from scratch with my grandma and we would decorate them and I still really enjoy making cookies and decorating them. And last.
00:01:24
Xochitl
Year or two years.
00:01:25
Xochitl
Ago for Christmas, my grandma, maybe three years ago now, my grandma gifted me some old.
00:01:33
Xochitl
Cookie cutters like some family cookie cutters.
00:01:36
Jack
Like from the 60s, you know those like metal ones? Yes, they’re the.
00:01:38
Xochitl
Yeah, like the vintage one. Yes. And I was really happy and excited about that. And that’s definitely my favorite tradition.
00:01:41
Jack
Best, right? Yeah.
00:01:49
Xochitl
For US style Christmas.
00:01:52
Jack
And do you?
00:01:53
Jack
Do you put a layer of like like like colored sugar coating? So like you’d make like a Santa with like a white belt and you make a like a tree which with green you put like green dye in it and stuff.
00:01:54
발표자
OK.
00:02:08
Xochitl
Yeah, you put like you make powdered sugar with like milk or water and you add the dye in and then you just, like, slather it with a knife or whatever onto the cookie.
00:02:18
발표자
But we.
00:02:19
Xochitl
Used to do that a lot with my grandma, but now that I make them.
00:02:21
Xochitl
Kind of on my own, I still make.
00:02:23
Xochitl
The icing but.
00:02:24
Xochitl
I just do like a little outline on the cookies because they’re way too sweet for me otherwise.
00:02:29
Jack
Yeah, I mean.
00:02:30
Jack
It’s just it’s like sugar on sugar, right? Yeah.
00:02:32
Xochitl
Yeah, it’s really it’s pretty much unpalatable. I mean, it was for me always my, I mean, not saying my grandma’s recipes unpalatable just to sugar is like too much. I’m not a huge sweets person.
00:02:46
Xochitl
So the sugar on the sugar is like tooth, achingly sweet. And I think in the US we have like, a a really sweet palette in general, because desserts are not that sweet. Other places in the world.
00:02:58
Jack
No, you’re right. That’s that’s a good point. I find that there there’s more buttery kind of a flavor to like cake and things like that that they don’t put so much sugar. It’s almost sickly sweet in the US.
00:03:12
Xochitl
Yeah, for sure.
00:03:13
Jack
Sometimes, yeah.
00:03:15
Xochitl
And there’s not that much.
00:03:16
Xochitl
Of a flavor profile because like, there’s not that much depth of flavor, it’s.
00:03:20
Xochitl
Just like sugar.
00:03:20
Xochitl
And more sugar.
00:03:21
Xochitl
There’s not like much more. Yeah, but for my Mexican tradition, I would say in Mexico, the presence actually come on three Kings Day and a lot of the Christmassy type.
00:03:22
Jack
Sugar and sugar.
00:03:35
Xochitl
Traditions happen.
00:03:36
Xochitl
And then, but we do celebrate Christmas as well, but I would say it’s more oriented around like a meal together. So I liked doing things like making tamales with my mom and my favorite absolute favorite thing is punchy, which is like fruit punch.
00:03:56
Xochitl
But it’s hot. It’s like hot food and and it’s really delicious. And my mom has the absolute best recipe.
00:04:05
Xochitl
Me that I have ever tried anytime someone is like ohh here’s a cup of punch. I just know I’m gonna be disappointed because it’s not as good.
00:04:13
Xochitl
As my moms.
00:04:16
Xochitl
And she gave me the recipe, and I’ve since shared it with uh. Well, I’ve shared the punch, not the recipe with other people. And they agreed with us.
00:04:22
Jack
Right. Keep that secret, yeah.
00:04:25
Xochitl
Yeah, my mom might stab me, but yeah, I think that that’s definitely probably one of the one of my favorite.
00:04:37
Xochitl
Holiday traditions and in Mexico, like I said, the gifts and the present stuff is.
00:04:42
Xochitl
More at a later date and during.
00:04:45
Xochitl
This time we have Posadas which like are you walk around with candles and go like door to door caroling kind of.
00:04:56
Xochitl
And different people like receive you and you might get like.
00:05:00
Xochitl
Punch or hot chocolate or stuff like that.
00:05:04
Jack
Yeah, OK. It’s almost like the song the the, You know.
00:05:08
Jack
UM, we wish you a Merry Christmas that that song, you know, bring us some figgy pudding. It’s like, give us something, you know, bring us a snack for singing a song to you for Carol and.
00:05:20
발표자
Right.
00:05:20
Jack
You you know.
00:05:21
Xochitl
Yeah, in in Christmas carols. It is like pretty American, I guess. But like the post status is kind of a different thing. You’re kind of. You’re supposed to be recreating the religious aspect where, like, Mary and Joseph went door to door asking for shelter.
00:05:37
Jack
Alright, OK.
00:05:38
Xochitl
If you’re sad that literally means shelter or like refuge. So yeah, that’s kind of the interesting aspect of.
00:05:46
Xochitl
How about you, Jeff? What’s your favorite Christmas tradition?
00:05:49
Jack
OK, well, mine are much more vanilla than yours. I mean, yours are very rich and interesting and I’m I’m thinking mine are like.
00:05:59
Jack
Not very interesting.
00:06:00
Jack
Now, but there are, there’s a couple that I I really enjoyed. The first one is obviously.
00:06:07
Jack
Decorating the tree.
00:06:08
Jack
Like I love it. I love to decorate the tree. So you know, you gotta, you gotta get some Christmas music on.
00:06:10
발표자
Ohh yeah.
00:06:16
Jack
You know.
00:06:19
Jack
You know, as the as the the stereo plays, you know, chestnuts roasting on an open fire, you know, like these, these old kind of Bing Crosby Christmas songs, you know, from the the 1950s and the 1960s. Those are my favorites, you know.
00:06:37
Jack
And and you know, maybe like a a Swiss miss hot chocolate with some marshmallows in it and and then start decorating the tree, usually with my daughter, we decorate a.
00:06:52
Jack
Tree we.
00:06:53
Jack
A little tree because we live in Korea. It’s not such a common tradition here to to get a real tree.
00:07:00
Jack
And to set it up, actually I think it’s pretty much illegal to do a real.
00:07:05
Jack
Tree I think.
00:07:06
Xochitl
Also, the houses are a.
00:07:08
Xochitl
Lot smaller in Korea generally speaking, than America, right, right. Yeah.
00:07:11
Jack
Yeah, there’s not a lot of space to put.
00:07:14
Jack
A real tree? Yeah. I mean, it’s just not it. It it, wouldn’t it?
00:07:18
Jack
Doesn’t make any sense.
00:07:19
Jack
To Korean people, so we use a a fake tree here and but we we put the lights up and we we have the decorations and a lot of them are.
00:07:30
Jack
None of the decorations are are ornaments that my daughter made in elementary school.
00:07:35
Jack
And we just you. So the guy has a, you know, so they’ll be like a baby picture of her or something and it’s just really sweet. And so that’s that’s our one tradition that that mainly my daughter and I do together and she’s coming back this week to from America to visit and so she’s.
00:07:54
Jack
One of the things she mentioned was she wants to put the tree up, so that’s really I haven’t done it yet, so I’m I’m saving.
00:08:01
Jack
It for her.
00:08:04
Jack
The second Christmas tradition that we we started a long time ago. I don’t do it anymore, but we did it when I was was younger, was we made gingerbread houses.
00:08:16
Xochitl
Ohh, that’s so fun.
00:08:18
Jack
Yeah. Have you ever done that before? Have you made it?
00:08:20
Xochitl
No, I haven’t. And I would love to, but I haven’t done that before.
00:08:26
Jack
Yeah. Yeah. So my we, my mom would bake the, you know, the walls and everything. Homemade, like, from scratch. It wasn’t like a, you know, where you can buy like a kit. Now you just everything’s already already made.
00:08:42
Jack
Basically you just make you just have like the.
00:08:47
Jack
I don’t know.
00:08:47
Jack
What you call the cream, whatever that keeps it together, the icing. Thank you. That holds it together. But my mom made the icing from scratch that she baked the the the gingerbread house. And so we would, you know.
00:08:51
Xochitl
You like the icing?
00:09:03
Jack
We would have.
00:09:03
Jack
Like bowls of M&M’s.
00:09:05
Jack
And gum.
00:09:07
Jack
And all these different candies and you know, you’d be everyone. All the kids would be licking the the icing, you know, while they’re making the house and.
00:09:16
Jack
The roof would be falling off of one house because it’s too heavy, you know, structural collapses occurring regularly, but at the end of the end of it, you, most of us would have like a nice little gingerbread house. And then, you know, I mean, obviously the best.
00:09:35
Jack
Part of it is.
00:09:36
Jack
Eating it so slowly it would get picked away where all the M&M’s are gone 1st and then someone would go after the gum drops and then all that’s left. Is this like rock icing?
00:09:50
Jack
And stale cookie. You know that it’s it’s inedible, but it was always really fun to to build gingerbread houses and it’s it’s they look really cool when they’re when they’re done really well they look really cool. I think it’s fun.
00:10:12
Jack
So those are my two, yeah.
00:10:12
발표자
Yeah, I’ve.
00:10:14
Xochitl
Been on the.
00:10:14
Xochitl
Internet this year, people doing like charcuterie board gingerbread houses, so they’re like savory instead of sweet.
00:10:20
Jack
Ohh nice OK.
00:10:22
Xochitl
Really neat looking. I’m like I definitely would eat that also, not just make it eat it quickly because I it has like the cheese and the crackers and the cured meats and stuff.
00:10:35
Jack
Oh, that’s really cool. Yeah, because, I mean, like, a real gingerbread house with all the candy.
00:10:40
Jack
And stuff. It’s kind of.
00:10:41
Jack
It’s probably like 10 to 15,000.
00:10:44
Jack
Calories on that thing, you.
00:10:46
Xochitl
Know and it’s.
00:10:47
Xochitl
Like sweet, it gets one-dimensional after a while like the flavor, and you get kind of sick of it. I.
00:10:51
Xochitl
Think, at least for me.
00:10:53
Jack
Although if you put, uh, if you put uhm.
00:10:57
발표자
What do they?
00:10:57
Jack
Call Mint chocolate M&M’s on it.
00:11:01
Jack
Those things are like.
00:11:03
Jack
I’ll I’ll eat those all day long. Forever. They’re amazing. I I have to stay away from those I they.
00:11:05
발표자
Thank you.
00:11:09
Jack
Don’t have them.
00:11:10
Jack
In Korea, and I’m so glad they don’t have them here. Like it’s it’s so dangerous.
00:11:17
Xochitl
Those are actually really beautiful.
00:11:18
Xochitl
Traditions, doc. I’m glad you shared those.
00:11:21
Xochitl
Uh, yeah. For our listeners, if you have any special traditions that you celebrate either Christmas or another holiday during this time, make sure to let us know in the comments down below at it is the English podcast.com shoot us an e-mail at AZ englishpodcast@gmail.com.
00:11:39
Xochitl
Join our WhatsApp group or join our WeChat Group.
00:11:42
Xochitl
And joining the conversation about the holidays and we’ll see you guys next time. Bye, bye.
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