By: Aly Ceballos, CTN Intern

With the holidays just around the corner, STC Starr campus Ascender students shared some of their holiday traditions

Ross Guerra, a second-year Ascender member, said “A holiday tradition that my family and I always do is spend the holidays at my ranch. We also decorate the Christmas tree every year as a family.  This year the theme for our Christmas tree was Mickey Mouse, the cowboy version. We chose this theme because of my little niece. Another thing we love to do is to open Christmas presents at midnight; we just can’t wait to see what we got each other.”

Gina Saenz, another second-semester student, also shared her family holiday traditions. “My family celebrates Christmas on the 24th of December. We all get together for dinner, and we watch movies all night until midnight. Once 12 hits, we all go to the Christmas tree and open our gifts. We all sit together in the living room and have fun opening the gifts.”

Ximena G. Garza, who is also a two-year Ascender student, shared what she does during the holidays. “On Christmas Eve all our family gets together to celebrate. My mom, aunts, and grandma make some delicious dinners like tamales and menudo. The men in the family make carne asada and cabrito. To pass some time, we play some games until it is midnight and time to give everyone a hug and open gifts. We play the white elephant gift exchange. We recently added new games for our holiday parties. We call them balloon popping and the unwrapping game. For the balloon popping, we tie two balloons on each of the player’s feet and the one that gets them popped loses. For the unwrapping game, we put lots of goodies in a big saran wrapping paper ball and you can get all the prizes that fall out until the other person gets a pair on the dice. You must wear big mittens so it can be harder. We always have so much fun playing games and spending time together.”