December 10, 2007

StreetTalk

by Carol Rosen

Do you plan to celebrate the holidays this year? Which one(s)? What are your plans? What is your favorite holiday memory? (Asked at Trader Joes, the Pruneyard)

“Sometimes. It depends, but as little as possible. Christmas, we will be setting up our tree and our train. We had hoped to go to Costa Rica, but we’re not. Our goals is to be out of the country every Christmas. My favorite memory is of watching ‘The Grinch Who Stole Christmas.’”

Cydney Bieber, 42
San Jose
Web content manager


“Yes, I celebrate Christmas. This year I’m going with my boy friend to stay with his family in Arizona. This is the first year I’ve been away from my family at Christmas, but I will re-celebrate it with my family in Colorado in January. I’ve had a lot of good Christmases, and there are all similar, but the best one I guess was last year when I got to celebrate with my niece and new nephew.”

Tanesha Dixon, 28
Campbell
Graduate student at SJSU


“Yes, both Christmas and Hanukah. I will travel to visit my family. I remember going out to the woods to cut down a tree in the snow in Colorado.”

Rachel Richards, 30
San Jose
Palmer Chiropractic student


“Oh yes, every holiday, especially Christmas. We will have a nice Swedish Christmas with my daughter. My favorite memory is my childhood Christmas in Sweden, we had a big family.”

Inga Hansson
Campbell resident since 1948
Retired


“Yes, the Solstice and Christmas. We plan to stay home and celebrate. Our second child is eight-weeks old. My memory is not being able to sleep [as a child] in anticipation of getting up on Christmas morning."

Henry Bankhead, 43
San Jose
Head librarian for Los Gatos


“Yes, we celebrate Christmas. Christmas Eve we celebrate with my kids and some in-laws and Christmas Day we go to my sisters for the rest of the relatives and in-laws. My favorite memory is the look on my [18-month old] son’s face when he saw the little electric car we had gotten him. He had just had open-heart surgery. It was fabulous.”

Laura Swenson, 53
Willow Glen
Bookkeeper


"Yes, we celebrate Christmas and New Years. This year Christmas Eve will be at my house—for the first time; and Christmas Day will be at my moms. My favorite memory is my brother and I sneaking in the hallway to make sure Santa came. We used to set an alarm.”

Kristy Hurst, 26
Campbell
Nurse


"Yes, Christmas. We have a Christmas Tree Farm and this year we plan to stay home, play games and have fires. We celebrate all together when we can, and we don’t stress. We choose any day we decide to celebrate. My favorite memory was when I was little and we lived in Prague. My parents told my sister and I they could not afford a tree, and that we would use a broom instead. On Christmas Eve, there you wait until the first star comes out before you can eat dinner, just when we finished dinner, a timer went off, lighting the tree [not a broom] with all its lights and ornaments."

Nike Mikes, 42
Los Gatos Mountains
Owner, 9XMedia