Families bringing Christmas traditions around the world to East Coast

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Sukriti Chhopra grew up in Delhi, India. Although she is not from the Christian faith and was brought up in a non-religious household, she wasn’t completely immune to the country’s capital state embracing festivals from around the world.

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Christmas was one such celebration, says the 46-year-old.

“We’d have celebrations in school – nativity scenes and the like,” said Chhopra, who now resides in Prince Edward Island.

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However, it was only after she started living in P.E.I. that she was properly exposed to Western traditional Christmas celebrations.

After moving out of India as a 36-year-old, Chhopra lived in Europe for a few years.

“My partner at the time was Swiss, and he was not very religious. We lived between Europe and India, and travelled a lot of the time, so we didn’t really celebrate Christmas,” she explained.

When her partner died of cancer a few years ago, Chhopra moved to California. Life then brought her to Halifax, NS, where she crossed paths with an Islander.

Eventually, Chhopra moved to P.E.I to be with her new beau and fondly recalled their first Christmas together.

“It was wonderful. We lived on the same property with his family, and they were a big family. Christmas was a big deal. The whole family would help decorate the house days before. There was a tree and decorating that was part of the tradition too,” said Chhopra.

Traditional gathering

Christmas Eve dinner meant a large family gathering once more, and on Christmas morning, everyone would sit in their pajamas to open their gifts.

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“There would be coffee and breakfast, after which everyone would retire to their own homes, but come supper, everyone would gather at one house again,” she said.

“It was a nice and family-oriented celebration. I really enjoyed it.”

Chhopra grew up vegetarian and has been a vegan for the last 13 years. On top of the warmth she experienced with her partner’s family, she recalled how welcoming they all were of her dietary choice.

In a meat-eating household, Christmas can quickly become all about turkey and dairy-based products. However, the year that Chhopra celebrated with her Islander partner and his family, the PEI residents made sure that the food was prepared with non-dairy and non-meat ingredients, too.

From trying out cauliflower steak recipes and avoiding dairy in mashed potatoes and vegetables to opting for vegan-friendly gravy instead of the regular kind and making sure there was a vegan charcuterie board, the family was “nice and accommodating,” said Chhopra.

Celebrating with friends

Chhopra is no longer with her Islander partner but that doesn’t mean Christmas celebrations have come to a standstill.

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In fact, she now celebrates the holiday with friends from all over the world – South Africa, Brazil, and India, to name a few – in a true sense of community, a blending of different cultures, life stories, and experiences.

“We get together at one person’s place. It’s a family-style potluck Christmas except with people from different cultures. Some of us have grown up celebrating Christmas. Some, like me, have not.”

Chhopra calls herself an atheist but Christmas – a five-hour afternoon celebration with friends from different parts of the world – is very much about being together and enjoying good food. All of her Christmas revellers, minus one, are vegan too. While Chhopra herself makes dishes inspired by cuisines across the world, her multicultural friends each bring dishes touched by their origins.

“We make it a nice, big, multicultural meal with different flavours. Everybody’s happy because everybody gets to try something new.”

Filipino-themed Christmas in PEI

Katherine Lanza, 42, from Charlottetown prefers to stick with what she knows how to make for the holiday.

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“We tried to make turkey once but let’s just say that it would have been better if I’d bought it from the store. It might have been cheaper, too. But as they say, you live and you learn,” laughed the newcomer from the Philippines.

Lanza, her husband Victor, and their daughter Adriana moved to Charlottetown in August 2022 with the primary intention of giving their daughter a better chance at pursuing tennis. They also wanted a better quality of life in the more slow-paced and safe province of PEI.

Christmas in the Philippines was a big deal, according to Lanza.

“It’s a gathering of different foods. We’d go from house to house consuming food. In our culture, the language of love is food.”

After moving to PEI, the Lanza family has tried to incorporate more Canadian traditions into their Christmas celebrations but have largely remained true to their own roots, which aren’t entirely different from North American traditions.

“We start with the Christmas tree, we sleep in, open gifts, etc. It’s quite similar,” said Lanza.

When it comes to food, however, things branch off. They opt to have Lechón – a traditional Filipino Christmas dish of roasted pig – instead of turkey, and Pancit, a popular noodle dish stir-fried with vegetables and chicken, pork, or shrimp, instead of ham.

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They also cook adobo, a Filipino dish where meat, seafood, or vegetables are first browned in oil, and then marinated and simmered in vinegar, soy sauce, and garlic.

“There are limited resources when it comes to Asian ingredients here in PEI so these are just the basics of what we usually make in the Philippines. I definitely miss all the other foods,” added Lanza.

Blending Italian and Canadian traditions

Eugenio Mio, 85, and Roxane Mio, 81, were born in Northern Italy in the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region, and although they were 12 kilometres apart in Italy, they first met one another in Montreal, Québec. They got married in 1965, moved to Québec City in l967, and eventually relocated to Halifax in l968.

Christmas back in Italy was a celebration that involved the gathering of families too, but it was also distinctly different from what Canadians are used to.

“[We] did not have Santa Claus bring gifts. In my town, it was St. Lucia and in Eugenio’s hometown, it was the little bird from the woods that brought children gifts,” said Roxane.

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On Christmas Day, family and extended family congregated for a very elaborate dinner with special foods. Roxane’s family had 10 adults and 15 children, and everyone lived together in a large two-storey home.

“As this was in the countryside, one large part of the home had a mill [which we used to] grind corn and wheat. I recall in a corner of the kitchen, there was a leafless tree with apples, nectarines, and caramel candies hanging from the branches, for all the kids,” she said.

“That was our treat after the Christmas meal of Polenta and Baccala. Of course, because of the many children, I was lucky to get one or two of the items on the tree.”

Her first Atlantic Canadian Christmas, in contrast, was very much like the regular Canadian Christmas festivities: a Christmas tree, family dinner, friends stopping by, and phone calls from loved ones living in all parts of the world.

The couple has been married for 59 years now and it’s safe to say that their Christmas celebrations at present have a blend of Italian and Canadian elements. There’s a tree that’s decorated a few nights before Christmas, an activity she loves because they get to reminisce over each item they place on the greenery.

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“We love to also reminisce over our parents’ stories of Christmases past,” added Roxane.

Roxane was born on Christmas Day back in 1943, during the Second World War. A few minutes after her birth, a United States plane bombed a train station in her hometown resulting in loud explosions that broke the windows in her home. Her parents like to tell the story that the whole world was celebrating her birth and that is why there were explosive sounds on that day.

In present-day Halifax, there is delicious food served on Christmas Day – tortellini in brodo, a classic Italian pasta dish of stuffed pasta in broth, breaded turkey breast or chicken breast, sandies (cookies made with pecans), and panettone (an Italian sweet bread and fruitcake) with espresso coffee laced with grappa (an Italian alcoholic beverage made from distilling the leftover grape parts from winemaking).

“There are also some Christmas songs that we usually sing, and many [of them] we still sing in Italian,” added Roxane.

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