810-Uncaster Farming, Saturday, December 14,1985 Christmas traditions vaiy from BY BORIS WEINTRAUB National Geographic News Service WASHINGTON - In Bethlehem, Pa., the dependents of Moravian settlers follow an old custom each Christmas. They build elaborate penes, as large as a room, filled with recreations of small towns, bucolic rural vistas, figures from everyday life. Then they go from house to house to see each family’s creation, known as a “putz.” In the nation’s Hispanic com munities, families celebrate Christmas by staging “las posadas,” processionals in which residents act out the search for room at the inn by visiting neighbors and meeting symbolic and preplanned rejection before finding prearranged success. In Greek Orthodox homes in Astoria, N.Y., women bake a traditional Christmas pita cake with a charm inside. The child who gets the pipe with the charm is considered a lucky winner. Indigenous Traditions Though there are certain con stants of Christmas celebrations everywhere in the United States-a Christinas tree, Santa Claus, candles, the sharing of gifts-a large number of traditions are local or regional, known to those in one community and different from those celebrated elsewhere. Often, as in the case of the putz or las posadas or Christmas pita cake, those traditions are the result of ethnicity. Just as often, they include foodways traditional with a given ethnic group. “Of all the aspects of ethnicity that persist when a group has been there a long time, the two that persist longest are foodways and holiday celebrations,” says folklorist Susan Samuelson. Samuelson has been studying the ■vSW BLACK REP iBUOW Okef &&OWNI KIUII- THIS BIRD IS ONLY POUND IN NEUI ZEA LAND. IT!S ABOUT THE SIZE OFP) HEN AND HAS A LONG SLENDER &EAK. THE 1N1N65 ARE CONCEAL - ED PND CANNOT BE USED POP PLIGHT. THE HI UN HUNTS FOR FOOD AT night and hides in the DQyriN\£ ROLLING UP LIRE A BALL WHEN IT SLEEPS. LEUJS PROTECT THESE BIRDS celebration of Christmas since 1977, and recently earned her doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania with a dissertation about Christmas celebrations in this country. Her conclusions about the persistence of ethnic holiday traditions are borne out by other folklorists. For example, Samuelson says, Czech Americans in the San Francisco Bay area follow a tradition of eating carp on Christmas Eve before going to midnight Mass. On the other hand, the Christmas Eve meal for Italian-Americans in Hammonton, N.J., usually includes squid, smelt, oysters, and clams. Residents of the eastern shore of Maryland, where life centers around the Chesapeake Bay, use oysters to stuff their holiday turkeys, reports Charles Camp, the Maryland state folklorist says. But residents of the more lan dlocked area of southern Maryland serve a Christmas meal with home-cured ham, known locally as “old ham.” Decorating Differences Methods of decorating for Christmas vary widely. Samuelsdn says that shopkeepers in Fremont, Calif., traditionally hire artists to paint their Christmas scenes, usually non-religious themes, on their store windows. In Baltimore’s row house neighborhoods, Camp says, most home owners decorate their own windows and doors for the holiday season. Such decorations is usually modest, consisting of assemblages of old ornaments, children’s paintings, and other homemade items, Camp says. “The decorations usually are counter to the current decorating fashions” like those featured in women’s magazines, says Camp. ORAM6E GREEK! LTBROWKI LT. BLUE LT. GREEN place to place And unlike suburban areas or neighborhoods like Chicago’s Sauganash, where home decorations draw visitors from other neighborhoods, “no family wants to better the Joneses, because they lived together for generations.” 2 o ° . , O O MP/96EOURTSLE 6N fl CflNf YOU &OFYTSLUERDHBDB P//VD THESE O TSEUYRCPHJCISKL TWELVE" o bktlcduozvshtcr CHRISTMRSq JBfIHOSCLOFESYUE WORDS //V TFI6PROFUPKMRYS 7R£* WORD ° POCFUMSTHOUURH MRZF ? SPY/LTFESTRYSOE 0 CfIROLSUFDHOSYOP ° ® 0° SSBODIEUIORHSUH O RfIEDTfiUDOIT 0 Y 5E ° O O hoyslhsn/ownzbuß O CLHUOCOUZTfIWHGD ° * RE6NAMI JU.NSCTSP 0 o 0 0 - o •CRROLS • RUDOLF 4 •SHEPHERD •NOEL a :sno '" s •christmrs •toys Wy. .SR/vr/7 • aarnoer %f// *G/Ff • TREE y?// See answers on page 812 • | blend - /• w y r 9 . ,i r r f r • 1 y Some regional or local traditions have a religious basis. Steve Zeitlin, folk arts co-ordinator for the Queens, N.Y., Council on the Arts, recalls a story he collected while co-editing a book on family folklore for the Smithsonian In stitution. “A Russian-Amencan man remembered going to his grand mother’s house, kneeling on the floor for an hour, and praying in ■