Making special food for Christmas, Thanksgiving, or other meaningful moments of the year isn’t excessive. It isn’t indulgence. It’s connection. Cooking, touching, harvesting, chopping, stirring—these acts tether us to something older and more enduring than the materialism of the moment.
Decorating Christmas cookies is forever seared into my memory. My grandmother would make the dough and let it chill in the basement. There were always bowls down there getting cold, as the refrigerator was overfilled with foods in process for different meals throughout the holiday week. She had the entire menu planned in advance, everything slowly moving toward its place.
If I dig deep into my childhood memories, it’s my grandmother’s pecan sour cream coffee cake and the tradition of decorating gingerbread and sugar cookies that bring joy to every cell of my body. In many ways, those memories fuel my commitment to keeping traditions alive for my own children.
The sour cream cake was rich and moist. She let us sprinkle the ribbon of sugar and pecans through the middle and across the top. I was always amazed at how perfectly it released from the Gugelhupf pan. She made countless desserts that simply sat on the sideboard throughout the Christmas holiday, ready for anyone who wandered by.
My grandmother, who was Unitarian, also decorated a menorah with fruit around it. There were other cultural Christmas pieces from Germany that I never fully understood—another candle arrangement—all living together on that same table. You could slice a piece of that pillowy cake whenever you wanted. My brother and I loved decorating the cookies, but we loved eating that sour cream cake most of all.
In my own household, traditions have shifted and merged.
My husband is Mexican, and one of his traditional holiday drinks is ponche—something like hot apple cider dressed up for Christmas. When we first got married, American holidays felt foreign and burdensome to him. Thanksgiving doesn’t exist in Mexico, and to him, it felt like more work on a day meant for rest.
Wanting to understand what actually felt meaningful to him, I asked one night about his favorite childhood holiday memories.
He told me about drinking ponche on the Day of the Dead and on New Year’s Eve.
I knew immediately that this was something worth learning properly—not through shortcuts or internet substitutions. So I asked a friend’s mother, Andrea, who was born in Mexico and is deeply committed to preserving traditional foods in her family, if she would teach me. She did. On Dec. 23, she came to our home, and together we made ponche. I’ve carried the tradition forward ever since.
Preparation is part of the ritual. Fresh sugarcane is chopped by hand. A big pot is filled with water and piloncillo, an unrefined Mexican sugar. We add unfiltered apple juice if we can find it, pineapple juice, chopped apples, guavas, and sliced citrus. The unlikely star of the drink is a tiny Mexican hawthorn fruit called tejocote.
I became so invested in the tradition that I planted tejocote trees on our farm in California. I didn’t sell a single one from the final harvest before we moved. I froze them, and years later, we’re still drinking Christmas ponche made from our own fruit.
I add fresh ginger and classic Christmas spices such as cinnamon, star anise, and clove. Sometimes cranberries, too—which aren’t traditional, but they’ve found their way in. The pot cooks until the fruit sinks, and the entire house fills with a warm, spiced scent that signals something is happening.
You scoop it into a cup. Some people chew the fruit and sugarcane. Others drink just the liquid. Children enjoy it as is or with a cinnamon stick. Adults may add alcohol if they like. Traditionally, it’s tequila. My husband, having refined his tastes here in the United States, now prefers Scotch and insists it’s better.
It’s a simple tradition, but it fills the house. I keep extra juice and fruit on hand to replenish the pot on Christmas morning if we drank too much the night before and want to keep it going.
Over the years, we’ve added tacos on Christmas Eve. We always have cinnamon rolls on Christmas morning. I now make my grandfather’s baked eggs, and every year I think about my grandmother’s sour cream coffee cake.
Some people resist decorating cookies because of artificial colors and store-bought sprinkles. But my grandmother gave us nuts, raisins, dried cranberries, and other simple things to decorate with. Yes, there were sprinkles, too—but they weren’t the point.
Creativity was.
It was about coming together. Using our hands. Smelling the kitchen. Being present.
Smells and tastes lock memories into us in a way nothing digital ever can. A memory formed while kneading dough or sipping warm ponche is not the same as one made over FaceTime or Zoom. It anchors us to the physical world, to each other, and to time.
We’ve become accustomed to convenience and abstraction. Traditions ask something different.
So I want to invite you into the kitchen. Bring back something from your childhood—or, if you didn’t have traditions, create new ones. These are the practices that tie us not just to the past, but to future generations.
Below, I’m sharing two of our family’s Christmas recipes. Consider this a small gift from our home to yours.
Sour Cream Cake
Butter and flour a Gugelhupf pan.Batter
- 1 cup butter, softened
- 2 cups sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1 cup sour cream
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 2 cups flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
Nut Mixture
- 4 teaspoons sugar
- 1 cup chopped pecans
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
Assembly
Place one-third of the batter in the pan. Add two-thirds of the nut mixture. Add the remaining batter, then top with the rest of the nuts.Bake
Bake at 400°F for 10 minutes, then reduce to 350°F and bake for another hour or slightly longer. Test the center for doneness. Cool on a rack for 10 minutes, then invert onto a plate.Ponche Navideño
Ingredients (large batch, serves 20 or more)- 1 gallon (4 liters) water
- 4 liters apple juice
- 4 cups pineapple juice
- 1 whole pineapple, peeled, cored, and chopped
- 1 orange, sliced
- 1 lemon, sliced
- 3 apples, peeled, cored, and chopped
- 3 pears, peeled, cored, and chopped
- 6 to 8 guavas, peeled and chopped
- 1 to 2 pounds tejocotes, fresh, frozen, or jarred
- 1 piloncillo cone (8 to 11 ounces), broken up
- Additional cane sugar if needed
- 6 cinnamon sticks
- 3 star anise pods
- 3 whole cloves
Instructions
In a large stockpot, combine water, apple juice, pineapple juice, piloncillo, cinnamon sticks, star anise, and cloves. Bring to a boil, stirring until the piloncillo dissolves.Add all chopped and sliced fruits.
Reduce the heat and simmer uncovered for 1 to 2 hours, until the fruit softens and sinks. Stir occasionally and adjust sweetness if needed.
Ladle into mugs, including fruit if desired. Serve hot.
To keep for several days: Bring to a full boil in the morning and evening, then cover and turn off the heat overnight. Add more fruit, water, or juice as needed.
