North Texans love celebrating the holidays with family traditions from decorating the Christmas tree and hanging stockings to visits from Santa Claus and Elf on the Shelf to watching Christmas movies and seeing Christmas light displays.
There's the food, too. Oh, the food! Cookies, pies, turkey, tamales, peppermint bark, and even fruitcake all have a spot on the table.
And, of course, amid all the hustle and bustle, there's the joy and wonder of a candlelight Christmas Eve service.
We asked four families to share the traditions that helped them celebrate Home for the Holidays.
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For the Browns in Collin County, it's tamales. Wanda Brown grew up in South Texas where it wasn't Christmas until her family started making tamales.
"Even when I was really young, we always got tamales on New Year's or Christmas Eve, and we'd eat them with the dishes that we got for Christmas. Even when we were little, we'd have these tiny little plates and tiny little forks, and we'd eat our tamales on Christmas Eve with our family. And it's just something we've always done," said Wanda Brown.
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"It's a tradition that I grew up with my family making them, and Brad and I have been doing it together with friends, I don't know, probably for the past 15, 20 years."
Time in the kitchen is also a holiday tradition for Kyla Syperski in McKinney. She's been baking cookies for decades but the cutout cookies of Christmases past have evolved into swirls of art perfected with patience.
"Lots of patience," she said. "I have to go slow 'cause I noticed you have to be relaxed to do it." And the icing on the cookie is that she does it with her daughters.
"This was something I wanted to do, and I talked 'em into doing it with me. I thought it would be fun to learn a new hobby," she said.
Over the years, Syperski has also perfected her recipe with a secret ingredient that bumps up the flavor from cookie to frosting. Her daughter Kayla Kennedy recently discovered it while mixing some dough.
"She doesn't even keep it in the pantry. It's in a box that she keeps sealed basically, top secret. so she pulls it out and that's what it was," said Kennedy.
While Syperski won't share her Christmas cookie recipe, she will share another favorite: Peanut Butter Cookies with Chocolate Chip.
Peanut Butter Cookies (with Chocolate Chips) from Kelly Szyperski
1/2 cup Butter
1/2 cup Peanut Butter
1/2 cup Granulated Sugar
1/2 cup Brown Sugar
1 Egg
1/2 tsp Vanilla
1-1/4 cups All Purpose Flour
3/4 tsp Soda
1/4 tsp Salt
Thoroughly cream butter, peanut butter, sugars, egg, and vanilla. Combine dry ingredients, and blend into the cream mixture. (My secret: add 10 oz of a combination of chocolate chips, 60% cacao bittersweet chocolate, and regular Nestles chocolate chips to this mixture). Shape into 1in balls. Bake at 375 for 10-12 minutes. Watch carefully. Try to take them out prior to them getting too brown.
Carol Christy Shaw in Fort Worth also enjoys baking during the holidays and at any time of the year. Her specialty is pies. She's carrying on a family tradition that started with her grandmother in the 1950s.
"She made pies. Therefore, I make pies. My mother made pies. My dad made pies," she said as she rolled out the pie crust. The crust is her favorite part. She does it all from scratch and with a rolling pin passed down from mother to daughter.
"This rolling pin. Look at it. It only has one end on it," she said. "It was my mother's and she passed away in 1985. So, I use this rolling pin every time I make pies. And she had an old red Pyrex bowl and that's what I make my crust in."
Faith is also a holiday tradition at Christmas which in Christian faiths celebrates the birth of Jesus. On Christmas Eve, houses of worship across North Texas will open their doors for one of the most revered traditions of all - the Christmas Eve service.
"It gives you that feeling of calm, where you don't feel like everything has to be done suddenly," said David Meline as we stood in the sanctuary at White's Chapel Methodist Church in Southlake.
Meline's connection to White's Chapel stretches back 25 years and the Christmas Eve service is at the center of many memories. His favorite is 2011 when he proposed to the girlfriend who became his wife. The Melines are now parents of three and raising their children with traditions of faith and worship and the Christmas Eve service that reveals the deeper meaning of the holiday.
"You remember that all of the presents that have to be wrapped, all of the things that you're committed to, all of that, at the end of the day, that's not the most important thing of what has to be done in the next 24 hours. The most important thing is to remember why," Meline said.
White's Chapel will host more than 15,000 during eight services between 5 p.m. on Monday, Dec. 23, and 11 p.m. on Tuesday, Dec. 24.
