From solemn Advent activities to whimsical Lego creations, holiday traditions in Harford County run the gamut of heartfelt and homespun expressions.
Families here, as everywhere, take advantage of the season to come together and find meaningful ways to celebrate the holidays, or invent new ones.
A seafood spread
The family of Bel Air's Tony DiPaula has revived one very old tradition, the Feast of the Seven Fishes, known in Italian as "Festa dei sette pesci" or "La Vigilia," The Vigil, that is served on Christmas Eve.
The feast, a large seafood dinner that consists of at least seven forms of seafood, was not one that DiPaula, a third-generation Italian-American, grew up doing.
"We didn't really follow this while the children were young, because kids are not usually big fans of seafood," he said.
Now that his four children – Rose, Regina, Joseph and Anna – are all in their 20s, he and his wife, Margaret, have brought the family together for the giant feast for past eight or nine years.
"All four of our children try to move heaven and earth to be there," he said. And, more importantly, "they like to do the cooking."
The DiPaulas' feast includes clams crostini (cooked clams on small pieces of bread), steamed shrimp, crab balls, scallops wrapped in bacon – and that's just the appetizers.
The main course is at least two kinds of fish, as well as mussels marinara, shrimp scampi or clams and pasta with a white sauce.
"We probably broke the cardinal rule, because we wanted to do something simple," he joked, adding they also broke a tradition of serving baccala, a dry, salted fish, on the feast because he said "it's awful."
DiPaula, a lawyer on Bel Air's Main Street, is a member of Harford County's Society of Italian American Businessmen, which formed about a year ago.
Although he did not grow up with traditions like the Feast of the Seven Fishes, his parents always come over for the event.
"It's kind of grown into a major family event. Many families just plan on getting together on Christmas Eve and doing a big seafood feast," he said.
"We really try to enjoy as many of the Italian cultural traditions as possible," he added, noting he has taken his family to Italy twice.
Christmas in Legoland
Shawn Rowland, of Bel Air, and his children, Ella, 10, and Fox, 8, were browsing through the stacks at the Bel Air branch of the Harford County Public Library on a recent Sunday afternoon.
"We have a Christmas Lego set that we put together, and we try to add to it every year," Shawn Rowland said.
Ella described the features of the Lego village, which include Santa's workshop and a carousel.
Shawn Rowland grew up in Montana, and his children were born there; they do not have as many snowy Christmases in Maryland.
"We hope for snow, and we do snow dances," he said.
He said the children also receive collectibles from their grandmother each year; Ella gets Snowbabies figurines, and Fox gets a nutcracker.
Finally, the children get to visit with local relatives and play with their cousins at Christmas.
"They like to get together with them and share gifts, and play with the gifts," he said.
Intention and sacrifice
The family of Michael Rubeling, a seminarian spending his pastoral year at St. Ignatius Church in Hickory, has long marked Advent, typically in western societies the four weeks leading up to Christmas, with numerous creative activities.
"One of the things that really stands out in my mind is, we have the Advent wreath," Rubeling, the oldest of 10 children who grew up in Frederick County, said.
The family's wreath, which sits on a table to symbolize the passing of Advent's four weeks, features a manger scene without Jesus.
Next to the wreath is a bowl filled with cut-up pieces of straw. Rubeling said his family would add a piece of straw to the wreath scene when they offered an act of sacrifice.
On Christmas Day, they would all add a statue of baby Jesus to the manger scene.
Besides the wreath, the family also practiced a tradition they called "Kris Kringle."
"We put all our names in a hat and each choose a name, and we will make an ornament for that person, and we will give that person the ornament on Christmas Eve," Rubeling explained.
"Now our Christmas tree has no professional gifts," he said. "It has all of our homemade ornaments. It's almost like a photo album of our lives and representations of our person."
Activities like these gave Rubeling and his siblings a way to really focus on the meaning of the holiday.
"It was an easy way, growing up, of making acts of sacrifice, acts of kindness, making it very intentional," he said.
He pointed out that those types of traditions require parents to discuss with their children and talk about as a family.
"We really are a faith-centered household," he said about his family.
"It made Christmas more about love, charity and sacrifice, about preparing your heart for serving others rather than just receiving or just being about me," he said.
Family and memory
For Maryanna Skowronski, director of the Historical Society of Harford County, Christmas Eve has been the one time her large family comes together and marks the holiday with special dinnerware and unique ornaments that are steeped in sentimental value.
"I guess what started it was, my mother's brothers are all 10 to 17 years older than me, and they all lived kind of out of state, in Florida and Delaware and Pennsylvania, but a lot of their children lived here," Skowronski said. "Over 30 years ago, we started having all our cousins over on Christmas Eve and just exchanging gifts."
The annual gathering, which includes 18 to 20 total people, has taken on new meaning since Skowronski's mother passed away two years ago. Her father died nearly a decade ago.
"Even though they are not here anymore, we still have the tradition of having it in their house, which is now my house," she said. "We don't have a big house, so they are in the dining room, they are in the living room."
The family mixes items such as Skowronski's grandmother's silver with hand-painted china pieces made by her aunt and special flatware that has been passed down.
"There's always china on the table, there's always crystal on the table, there's linen," she said. "It's not that valuable, but it's sentimental."
Christmas tree ornaments, meanwhile, include items like pieces of a century-old, papier-mache nativity set – just the farm animals, a shepherd and madonna – along with a stable her brother made.
The event now includes extended family members who are Jewish, so they exchange both Hanukkah and Christmas presents.
"We kind of laugh; we say it's like the ecumenical Christmas," Skowronski said. "It's a blended family, in terms of by marriage and by faith and distance, and I don't think we will ever not do [the dinner]."
Ornaments exchange
Heather Giles, of Bel Air, said her family typically cuts down a Christmas tree at a tree farm in Jarrettsville, visits Symphony Woods in Columbia to see holiday light displays and sees Santa Claus at the Bass Pro Shops store in Arundel Mills.
Giles, who has a 3 1/2-year-old son, J.T., noted there are stuffed reindeer at the latter location and the operators do not charge for photos with Santa.
A family tradition from her childhood, which Giles has passed on to her husband and son, is exchanging ornaments.
"Every year, since I was a little kid, we've exchanged Christmas tree ornaments," she said.
Giles noted she and her husband have 17 ornaments for every year they have been together.
"I actually have Christmas tree ornaments that I've had since I was 2 or 3," she added.
Crafty kids
Jen Snyder, a busy mom and family photographer from Forest Hill, annually makes Christmas ornaments with her three children, ages 7, 4 and 18 months.
Most recently, they made salt-dough wreaths as gifts for relatives last year. The doughy leftovers were also put to creative use, with her then-3-year-old son making her a taco.
"Front and center on the tree is a glittery yellow and green Christmas taco," Snyder explained via e-mail.
The tradition "started when my oldest was just a toddler and we made applesauce cinnamon ornaments together.I rolled them out to use cookie cutters to make gingerbread men and on a whim I gave her the leftover dough to mold into something. It ended up becoming one of my most treasured ornaments that I lovingly call 'The Christmas Poo' because it looks like... well, you know. But she made it herself."
"These ornaments are so special to me because I can look over the tree year after year and remember who my kids really were at the time," she explained. "I always write the date on the back of each ornament to help jog my memory of when each one was made," as well as its artist.
"It's so much more meaningful and special to me than a tree full of 'pretty' things with no real sentimental value. My tree is a visual history of my family as we grow together," she added.
Snyder said she also tries to document the holidays on Instagram, "except I am trying to push back against the fake perfection of social media. I tag many of my photos with #momreality to 'normalize' motherhood."
"I try to show the good, the bad and the ugly," she explained. "Whereas most people like to crop out the mess, the tantrums and the chaos, I believe that those moments are where the real story lives. My Christmas traditions are all about rolling with the chaos and rejoicing in how it really is."
Hanukkah celebrations
Paula Mullis, a Joppatowne resident and chair of the Joppa/Joppatowne Community Council, celebrates the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah with her children and grandchildren each year.
Mullis said the annual celebration takes place at her son's house in Abingdon, and the family, including her daughter and three grandchildren, gets together to light candles, exchange gifts and have dinner.
"It's a pretty big to-do for us, actually, so we make a really nice evening out of it," she said.
Hanukkah, an eight-day celebration of the liberation of the Hebrew temple in ancient Jerusalem that usually falls during the Christmas season, is typically observed in a low-key fashion by many Jewish families, compared to elaborate displays of Christmas lights and decorations and the exchange of large gifts.
"When we were growing up, it was just the lighting of the Hanukkah candles," said Mullis, who grew up in the Bronx, N.Y.
Mullis said her family has a festive Hanukkah celebration, however, and her son usually covers his house and lawn with Hanukkah-themed blowup decorations and lighted window decorations in the shape of the Star of David and a menorah.
"We try to make it as festive as we can for the kids so they feel included in all the festivities," she said.
Temple Adas Shalom in Havre de Grace hosted a Hanukkah celebration Saturday. Mullis said the event includes songs from local choirs, a dinner and a silent auction.
"[There are] just some really neat things going on," she said.
Saving lives on Christmas
Rick Davis, fire chief for the Bel Air Volunteer Fire Company, said it would be "very odd" for members of the company to not have to respond to an emergency call on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day.
Davis, who has been a member of the fire company for 25 years, said he experienced a situation even rarer during Christmas Eve and Christmas Day of 2013 – he saved two people whose hearts had stopped working.
He said he saved a woman who went into cardiac arrest while attending a Christmas Eve Mass at St. Margaret Parish, and then saved a man who was being transported the next day in a Norrisville Volunteer Fire Company ambulance and went into cardiac arrest en route to University of Maryland Upper Chesapeake Medical Center in Bel Air.
Davis said he jumped into the ambulance when it reached Route 23 and performed CPR on the man.
"We don't typically get two saves on Christmas Day," he said. "That's out of the norm."
Davis said Bel Air's main firehouse on South Hickory Avenue, along with the satellite firehouses in Patterson Mill and Forest Hill, are usually decorated for Christmas with exterior lights.
"We light the firehouse up the night of Thanksgiving," he said.
Davis said he and his family are planning to go to Disney World in Florida this year, but they will usually be at home and spend Christmas morning together.
"We celebrate Christmas the same as most families," he said. "We open our presents in the morning and put presents together in the afternoon and then have dinner at night."
He said Christmas is usually the same as any other day around the firehouse.
"Your life gets interrupted for a few minutes to go help someone else," he said.