When the holiday season arrives, Abby Menashe, an Ida B. Wells High School administration assistant, always knows what her plans will be.
Every December, Menashe sees the Oregon Zoo lights, visits Peacock Lane, travels to Palm Desert for a family reunion to celebrate Hanukkah and joins her husband’s side of the family for dinner one night. At IBW, she also helps organize the “Positive Charge! PDX” club’s Cookies for Cause event.
Menashe doesn’t have a single favorite moment during the holiday season. Between the time spent with her family and her work with “Positive Charge! PDX,” Menashe says she loves it all.
For Menashe, the holidays are a time to connect and take care of one another. “Community is really important, and we all have to be there for each other,” she says. “[The] holiday season is an opportunity for everyone to reach out beyond themselves, and that’s what I love about this season. There’s so much need these days.”
Menashe says community can mean many different things, whether that is family, friends, or the broader community. Marie Pearson, an art teacher at IBW, has leaned on different parts of her community during the holidays.
“I don’t [necessarily] have traditions decided yet,” she says. Some years, she travels to Minnesota to celebrate Christmas with her parents. When she would travel back, Pearson and her dad had a ritual of going to the gym every day.
At other times, Pearson spends her winter break with her older brother in Arizona to catch some sun in December. Occasionally, Pearson spends winter break with her younger brother and his family, who also live in Minnesota. They often find winter activities, unrelated to Christmas, to do together since her younger brother’s family is Muslim.
Sometimes, she joins her friends in Portland for Christmas or New Year’s dinners. “Friends become so important,” says Pearson. “I’m so grateful to friends of mine who have invited me to be part of their group.” Other years, Pearson has spent the holidays solo, doing things like going on a hike to enjoy her time off.
However, after Pearson’s dad’s recent passing this fall, she will focus on spending time with her mom in Minnesota this Christmas. “Things change because people leave your family and people come into your family,” says Pearson. “The way that it looks one year doesn’t mean it’s going to look the same way next year.”
Smaller traditions Pearson practices still bring her a lot of comfort. She always craves winter squash and root vegetables when it gets cold because that was her favorite thing her mom would make during the winter.
For Ken Muraoka, a business teacher at IBW, traditions hold a strong place in his family’s holiday celebrations.
In the Muraoka household, Christmas Eve is the “big” day. Every Christmas Eve, his entire family goes to a formal dinner. When they return home, his kids open two gifts, one of which is a matching family pajama set for the year. Then Muraoka watches Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” with his wife while they wrap presents after their kids go to bed.
While Muraoka’s traditions have evolved over the years, they always play the important role of passing on “crucial” values to his kids. “The value of family is really important in both my wife’s and my family,” he says. “[Our] Christmas traditions are all built around being with family, right, and the entire family for the whole day and doing everything together.”
Muraoka says the idea of Christmas “magic” is rooted in bigger ideas. “Generosity and giving gifts to people that you love—[sic] the Christmas magic that’s created around it—that’s based in love and family,” he says. “That is very real.”
Samantha Roark, an IBW senior, says the same. “Christmas time is very magical,” she says. “When I was a kid, the whole Santa thing was very magical, but now, all those other sorts of traditions have more [of] an impact.”
Roark has various holiday traditions like making a dish called fruit soup, watching the “Polar Express,” going to a tree farm with her family and eating sandwiches they call “midnight sandwiches” before watching the Times Square Ball Drop on New Year’s Eve.
These traditions are important to Roark because she gets to spend time with her family, and it makes the season more exciting and comforting.
The connection from time spent with family, friends, or the community is what the holidays are truly about to people at IBW. “You get so much from giving of yourself, whether it’s to your family [or] your community. Your community becomes your family,” says Menashe. “It’s critical.”
