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SUN CHRONICLE STAFF

Holiday celebrations in the upcoming season vary in different countries and among different cultures.

Some of those traditions are celebrated here in the Attleboro area, reflecting an array of ethnicity.

And while various people may celebrate holidays in different ways, what they all have in common is that they center around family, friends, food and faith.

Here, some descendents of immigrants in our area, as well as those who have recently arrived to this country, share aspects of their respective holiday celebrations incorporating their heritage and cultural traditions. Sweden

It's an "on" year this Christmas Eve, so there will be about 80 family members gathering at Covenant Church to share and celebrate the holiday, Scandinavian-style, said Steve Erickson.

When it's an "off year," with three or four couples visiting elsewhere, there's only about 50 people and then the family affair is hosted at his Attleboro home for the holiday.

The Swedish Christmas season begins on Saint Lucia Day, Dec. 13, and climaxes with the traditional smorgasbord on Christmas Eve.

Erickson's cousin, Gwen Redding, proprietor of Distinctively Sweden in Plainville, is among those who helps with the cooking of the smorgasbord. Her father Nils Johnson arrived in Attleboro from Sweden on the eve of the Great Depression and her mother was a daughter of Swedish immigrants.

It's the aroma of the smorgasbord - like the Swedish meatballs; the kok-korv, a mild pork sausage; sil, which is pickled herring; and vort limpa, a stuffed rye loaf, among those dishes - "that brings back memories" of family-filled Christmas celebrations as a child, said Erickson of Swanson Construction.

It's a decades-old family tradition.

There's so many folks, they go in shifts to the Covenant Church's candlelight services, he said.

"It's pretty festive," with Santa always arriving on cue right after dinner, Erickson said.

It's the food, the church service, Santa and the family "all tied in one package," he said. Mexico

While Christmas Eve and Christmas is celebrated, "Three Kings Day" on Jan. 6 is perhaps the largest celebration of this season in Mexico, said David Lopez and Mayela Diaz, adult students who attend class at The Literacy Center in Attleboro.

The date, the 12th day after Christmas, commemorates the arrival of the Magi in Bethlehem.

Children receive presents and streets fill with festive processions, including men dressed up as the kings, in Mexico and some other countries where the event is observed.

Diaz said special foods are served, including a round sweet bread decorated with plastic babies representing Jesus, or with figurines hidden inside of the bread, called Rosca de Reyes.

Lopez said Feb. 2, Candelaria Day, is also cause for celebration involving a big dinner among families and which includes fireworks.

A religious and family celebration of pre-Hispanic traditions and Catholic beliefs, during Candelmas - as it is known in English - candles were brought to church to be blessed.

In Portugal, said Connie Paiva, there are similar celebrations, with mass at midnight on Dec. 25 and children receiving their gifts on Christmas Eve and/or Christmas Day. Jan. 6 also includes grand processions, with horseback riders along the route, in celebration of Three Kings Day.

Egypt

A country with several cultural influences, the season's traditions are diverse. Christians and Muslims both celebrate the Nativity (the birth of Jesus Christ).

One of the larger Christian celebrations of the season in Egypt is on Jan. 7, when there is a family feast, said Sonia Israil and Emad Abdelnoir, students at TLC.

The event, observed by the Coptic (Orthodox) Church, celebrates the birth of Jesus.

"The family eats together and I can bring my friends," Israil said. Turkey, chicken - everything goes for the feast, she said.

The feast follows 43 days of fasting from meats and dairy, though they are allowed to eat fish, Israil said.

"The feast is to celebrate together; to get together with families."

The holiday events largely involve the church, Abdelnoir said, with liturgies at each occasion. On Christmas Eve, he added, Santa Claus arrives with some toys and candy for every child.

Nabil Hafez said the New Year's celebration on Dec. 31 starts with a midnight service in church. Then there are festivals and parties.

He said one tradition is that children eat half a banana before midnight and then eat the other half after the clock strikes 12 to mark the new year.

Korea

Jan. 1 is a big celebratory day, with the evening marked with a slate of special foods, said Misukpae Bae, a student at TLC.

One featured food is "bibimbap," a boiled rice and vegetable mixture, she said. In South Korea, the mixture represents "all the bad memories that you want to forget on Dec. 31" that have piled up during the year.

On Jan. 1, New Year's Day, everyone gathers downtown in Bae's former hometown, wearing traditional Korean dress and where the bell is rung 33 times. Children, "according to generation," bow to their elders and there are exchanges of good wishes in the coming year, Bae said.

Gifts are also exchanged.

Bae said she has continued some of those traditions here, including eating the traditional "ddogguk" - a rice cake. "Everybody eats it, otherwise no birthday" that year, she said in relating the tradition. Jan. 1 also sees the playing of traditional board games, including "Nelddugi," a game played by females that relates to a time in their culture when women were not allowed to go outside of the house, Bae said.

China

Mei Lu from China and a student at TLC, said the Chinese New Year is big, but the date changes every year based on the lunar calendar.

"We stay awake" on that day falling in the first month of the new year, she said. "It's a big family holiday."

They gather to eat dumplings, noodles, duck and more.

Tradition is that parents give their children money in a red paper bag with wishes for a prosperous year, she said.

As a Buddhist she does not celebrate Christmas. But here in this country, she's involved in a bit of the celebration of the season by sharing a party with her friend.

French-Canadian

Christmas Eve was always special in her French-Canadian home, said Claire Beauregard of Seekonk.

Growing up, there would be the reading of the Christmas story according to Saint Mark interspersed with Christmas carols.

Most of the children in her large family would sing in the choir at midnight Christmas mass, then arrive back home for "Reveil Lon," meaning "waking up," to share in French meat pies and other treats.

Her maternal great grandparents lived in the Province De Quebec; her husband Normand's family came from Canada as well.

Beauregard said the Christmas Eve tradition was carried on even when her children started attending college and were home for the holidays. Presents were opened, one at a time, on Christmas morning, after everyone was fed.

Perhaps the larger celebration, however, comes on "Jour De L'an" - Jan. 1, New Year's Day.

"There wasn't much beef - we relied on pork," she said of her Canadian ancestors. There is "Ragout" - a kind of gravy with pork hocks simmered with seasoning and onion - and meatballs spiced with nutmeg and cloves and carrot sticks, then served with boiled potatoes, and pork meat pie and ham. Then there's the pickled beets and celery.

"It was a day for a feast surrounding the meats from the pig" and which in earlier days included using everything from the snout to the tail - some of which, Beauregard said, has "thankfully been lost" as part of their current-day celebrations.

And it's served all day, "so that if anyone came by, a plate would be warmed up for them," Beauregard said of the tradition, still celebrated in her family today. She cooks up the "Ragout."

French meat pie and meat stuffing is also fare for the day.

As a child, she and her siblings would kneel before her father "and he would bless us for the year."

"A lot of Canadians would save their gifts for that day," she added.

The family got too large to hold a New Year's reunion at one of the homes, so now, they go to a restaurant.

The New Year's Day tradition still belongs to Beauregard and her immediate family, however. "It's the togetherness and the food." And the family remains close.

Good wishes are also extended beyond the family.

Tradition is that everyone they meet is kissed on both cheeks and wished "bonne et heureux annee," which means "a good and happy new year," Beauregard said.

"I always say it in French," she said. "We do that all the way into the new year to anybody we have not seen."

"By March it usually dies down," she said, chuckling.

Italian

Nancy Greim of Attleboro said her mother and all of her aunts used to speak Italian to each other. She knows only a few words.

It is her sister Mary who ensures that the cultural family holiday traditions, including Italian fare, are continued.

That includes a calamari pie served up for the big family gathering on Christmas Eve at her sister's house in Norwood.

"It's so labor intensive" as are a number of dishes she prepares, Greim said. And as for the calamari, or squid, pie "out of 30 people at Christmas dinner, all of 2 like it. But she'll be damned if she gives it up."

There's also the traditional fish stew and, of course, pasta with every dish. Then there's the ricotta pie. And there's another dish whose ingredients include "raisins, some kind of pasta and lots of eggs," said Greim, who works with her sister at her family owned insurance agency.

"Food is our biggest tradition."

She said family members pitch in, one of them each year offering to make up her grandmother's recipe of baby spring lamb in batter, cut into bite-sized pieces along with cauliflower, as an appetizer. All of Greim's grandparents were born in Italy.

Her brother-in-law Frank has taken up making the homemade wine served during the event, something that her grandfather used to do. Her brother-in-law initially started the venture with her grandfather's barrels.

"It's Christmas Eve the way my aunts always did it," Greim said of her family's current celebration. "The food never changes on Christmas Eve."

And the family endures.

"There are 16 grandchildren on our side and it has made them closer," extending beyond the holiday gatherings, she said. "The kids text each other" and the older ones are protective of the younger ones, offering advice when needed.

Greim said: "With any culture that keeps some of its traditions, it keeps people close - even when they're not having squid pie."

SUSAN LaHOUD can be reached at 508-236-0398 or at slahoud@thesunchronicle.com.