Good Afternoon, readers! Lens of The People is a column dedicated to the capture of the real-life scenarios and events of the local Houston area whilst also giving the thoughts and opinions of the Houston community itself its own voice to speak through.
“A holiday tradition I have with my family is on Christmas morning, everyone goes to my grandfather’s house and everyone comes over and we cook for the entire family, open gifts, play games… Most of the time it’s done at his house because he is getting a little older, so in order to keep him in good spirits we do the holidays over there, while we watch football and basketball on TV.” -Niya Spain
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“For the past three years, I have spent my Christmas Eve at work. I wait tables and I enjoy doing it because though I may not see my family, I see other families on Christmas Eve enjoying their time and laughing. On Christmas Day on the other hand, our tradition is that my family gets together for a family breakfast, but before breakfast we let everyone open their gifts with joy and laughter. So in simple terms, I work one day, and the next day I live life.” -Christian Greene
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“Every year we always dress to match a certain theme for each year. We play white elephant in that we don’t buy gifts individually, there’s always seafood and frozen daiquiris and it’s just all around a good time.” -Januel M.
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“Our traditions consist of decorating. I really like to make sure that my environment is holiday-centric because when you have decorations it just adds to the atmosphere of the holiday. I definitely do holiday cleaning because then we’ll have dinner together and we usually watch Christmas movies. And then as for New Year’s, it’s a tradition for me to just spend as much time with friends and family before the year closes out, which calms my spirit very much.” -Tamerras Leonard
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“One tradition I have for Christmas that I do with my family is that we order pizza from Home Run Inn, which is a Chicago pizza place. We also play a bunch of games in our PJs on Christmas Eve. I get new PJs every year to wear on Christmas Eve as well the morning of, and we also just recently started matching our PJs with each other.” Bree S.
Photographer’s Thoughts
During the holidays, my family always finds its way to my aunt’s house, usually consisting of a few of my cousins, my uncle, my mom and my grandmother. My grandmother always bakes a cake, along with some pies if she’s in the mood, and while we’re all sitting down shooting the breeze and watching movies, we’re also counting down to 12 o’clock so that everyone (mostly the kids) can open their presents and share with everyone else. On Christmas Day, we all leave and go visit more distant members of our family as well as our different sides of the family. For example, since I spend Christmas Eve with my mom’s side, on Christmas Day, I go and visit my dad’s side for a while. It’s a pretty wholesome time for me and I’m glad I get to do it every year.
This was Lens of The People, a column dedicated to giving the Houston community a voice and a platform. Stay on the lookout for more, all made possible by The Forward Times!