A Southern California Christmas

Note: When visiting family in Pennsylvania in October a few years ago, just after visiting friends in Montreal for the first time, I was looking at the local paper and saw they had a section where you could submit “Holiday Memories”. I was intrigued and so submitted, on Halloween no less, a piece that recollected the many Christmases spent in my home state of California and what a southern California Christmas looked like for me and my parents. To my surprise, the newspaper published my piece, even from an out of state guy like me! This was to be the first of two holiday pieces that appeared in newspapers. The second piece I wrote a year later in 2015 describing what Halloween meant for me which appeared in the Weekend section of the Los Angeles Times.

Here for your pleasure in its full form is my Christmas piece printed in “The Morning Call” newspaper on December 4, 2014.

I grew up in a place where snow was a mere decoration in storefront windows or seen in movies like “White Christmas.” And yet I still enjoyed magical and wintry experiences growing up in sunny southern California!

From the time I was 6 years old until I graduated from high school, my family and I had a consistent holiday tradition. We are a theater-going bunch and always enjoyed dressing up, every other year seeing one of many great productions of “The Nutcracker” ballet or a fantastic adaptation of Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” which is now into its 35th year in Orange County [at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa, which this year in 2025 is celebrating its 45th anniversary as they did not perform the production in 2020].

Afterward, we would then go window shopping at a large mall complex known as Fashion Island and have dinner at one of our favorite Italian restaurants. After marveling at the gigantic Christmas tree reigning over this mall kingdom, we would then drive through misty beach communities to enjoy hot cocoa and martinis, the latter for my parents, at the Ritz Carlton hotel [in Laguna Niguel] to see the fresh gingerbread house creation, listen to the sultry lounge piano [music] or request a tune from a strolling quartet of Christmas carolers.

It was then a short ride home after a day full of activity!

-Cameron Yanoscik, Seal Beach, Calfornia