The A to Z English Podcast | What's your favorite Christmas tradition?

In this episode of The A to Z English Podcast, Xochitl and Jack discuss their favorite Christmas traditions.Transcript:00:00:00JackYou're listening to the A-Z English podcast.00:00:14JackWelcome 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?00:00:33JackAnd so, so I'll let I'll start with you first. What's your your favorite family Christmas tradition?00:00:40XochitlWell, Jack, I would say my favorite family Christmas.00:00:43XochitlWell, 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.00:00:59XochitlMyth 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.00:01:08JackRight.00:01:13XochitlWe would always.00:01:13XochitlMake cookies from scratch with my grandma and we would decorate them and I still really enjoy making cookies and decorating them. And last.00:01:24XochitlYear or two years.00:01:25XochitlAgo for Christmas, my grandma, maybe three years ago now, my grandma gifted me some old.00:01:33XochitlCookie cutters like some family cookie cutters.00:01:36JackLike from the 60s, you know those like metal ones? Yes, they're the.00:01:38XochitlYeah, like the vintage one. Yes. And I was really happy and excited about that. And that's definitely my favorite tradition.00:01:41JackBest, right? Yeah.00:01:49XochitlFor US style Christmas.00:01:52JackAnd do you?00:01:53JackDo 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.00:01:54발표자OK.00:02:08XochitlYeah, 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.00:02:18발표자But we.00:02:19XochitlUsed to do that a lot with my grandma, but now that I make them.00:02:21XochitlKind of on my own, I still make.00:02:23XochitlThe icing but.00:02:24XochitlI just do like a little outline on the cookies because they're way too sweet for me otherwise.00:02:29JackYeah, I mean.00:02:30JackIt's just it's like sugar on sugar, right? Yeah.00:02:32XochitlYeah, 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.00:02:46XochitlSo 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.00:02:58JackNo, 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.00:03:12XochitlYeah, for sure.00:03:13JackSometimes, yeah.00:03:15XochitlAnd there's not that much.00:03:16XochitlOf a flavor profile because like, there's not that much depth of flavor, it's.00:03:20XochitlJust like sugar.00:03:20XochitlAnd more sugar.00:03:21XochitlThere'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.00:03:22JackSugar and sugar.00:03:35XochitlTraditions happen.00:03:36XochitlAnd 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.00:03:56XochitlBut it's hot. It's like hot food and and it's really delicious. And my mom has the absolute best recipe.00:04:05XochitlMe 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.00:04:13XochitlAs my moms.00:04:16XochitlAnd 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.00:04:22JackRight. Keep that secret, yeah.00:04:25XochitlYeah, my mom might stab me, but yeah, I think that that's definitely probably one of the one of my favorite.00:04:37XochitlHoliday traditions and in Mexico, like I said, the gifts and the present stuff is.00:04:42XochitlMore at a later date and during.00:04:45XochitlThis time we have Posadas which like are you walk around with candles and go like door to door caroling kind of.00:04:56XochitlAnd different people like receive you and you might get like.00:05:00XochitlPunch or hot chocolate or stuff like that.00:05:04JackYeah, OK. It's almost like the song the the, You know.00:05:08JackUM, 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.00:05:20발표자Right.00:05:20JackYou you know.00:05:21XochitlYeah, 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.00:05:37JackAlright, OK.00:05:38XochitlIf you're sad that literally means shelter or like refuge. So yeah, that's kind of the interesting aspect of.00:05:46XochitlHow about you, Jeff? What's your favorite Christmas tradition?00:05:49JackOK, 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.00:05:59JackNot very interesting.00:06:00JackNow, but there are, there's a couple that I I really enjoyed. The first one is obviously.00:06:07JackDecorating the tree.00:06:08JackLike I love it. I love to decorate the tree. So you know, you gotta, you gotta get some Christmas music on.00:06:10발표자Ohh yeah.00:06:16JackYou know.00:06:19JackYou 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.00:06:37JackAnd 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.00:06:52JackTree we.00:06:53JackA little tree because we live in Korea. It's not such a common tradition here to to get a real tree.00:07:00JackAnd to set it up, actually I think it's pretty much illegal to do a real.00:07:05JackTree I think.00:07:06XochitlAlso, the houses are a.00:07:08XochitlLot smaller in Korea generally speaking, than America, right, right. Yeah.00:07:11JackYeah, there's not a lot of space to put.00:07:14JackA real tree? Yeah. I mean, it's just not it. It it, wouldn't it?00:07:18JackDoesn't make any sense.00:07:19JackTo 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.00:07:30JackNone of the decorations are are ornaments that my daughter made in elementary school.00:07:35JackAnd 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.00:07:54JackOne 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.00:08:01JackIt for her.00:08:04JackThe 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.00:08:16XochitlOhh, that's so fun.00:08:18JackYeah. Have you ever done that before? Have you made it?00:08:20XochitlNo, I haven't. And I would love to, but I haven't done that before.00:08:26JackYeah. 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.00:08:42JackBasically you just make you just have like the.00:08:47JackI don't know.00:08:47JackWhat 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.00:08:51XochitlYou like the icing?00:09:03JackWe would have.00:09:03JackLike bowls of M&M's.00:09:05JackAnd gum.00:09:07JackAnd 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.00:09:16JackThe 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.00:09:35JackPart of it is.00:09:36JackEating 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?00:09:50JackAnd 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.00:10:12JackSo those are my two, yeah.00:10:12발표자Yeah, I've.00:10:14XochitlBeen on the.00:10:14XochitlInternet this year, people doing like charcuterie board gingerbread houses, so they're like savory instead of sweet.00:10:20JackOhh nice OK.00:10:22XochitlReally 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.00:10:35JackOh, that's really cool. Yeah, because, I mean, like, a real gingerbread house with all the candy.00:10:40JackAnd stuff. It's kind of.00:10:41JackIt's probably like 10 to 15,000.00:10:44JackCalories on that thing, you.00:10:46XochitlKnow and it's.00:10:47XochitlLike sweet, it gets one-dimensional after a while like the flavor, and you get kind of sick of it. I.00:10:51XochitlThink, at least for me.00:10:53JackAlthough if you put, uh, if you put uhm.00:10:57발표자What do they?00:10:57JackCall Mint chocolate M&M's on it.00:11:01JackThose things are like.00:11:03JackI'll I'll eat those all day long. Forever. They're amazing. I I have to stay away from those I they.00:11:05발표자Thank you.00:11:09JackDon't have them.00:11:10JackIn Korea, and I'm so glad they don't have them here. Like it's it's so dangerous.00:11:17XochitlThose are actually really beautiful.00:11:18XochitlTraditions, doc. I'm glad you shared those.00:11:21XochitlUh, 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 [email protected]:11:39XochitlJoin our WhatsApp group or join our WeChat Group.00:11:42XochitlAnd joining the conversation about the holidays and we'll see you guys next time. 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