[Caroline] "Share Your World"
invites you to learn
about different cultures
through our personal stories.
In this episode,
we're celebrating holidays
from our cultural backgrounds.
[Caroline] Every culture has its own holiday traditions.
Today, we're sharing a few of our favorites.
There's a holiday in the Armenian culture
called Vartavar
or Vardavar,
depending on if you're an Eastern Armenian
or Western Armenian dialect.
This usually happens in July, and basically it is the day
where everyone splashes each other with water.
Everyone's running into fountains.
It is just a countrywide water fight.
Vardavar goes back to the Pagan times,
and it is to worship the goddess, Astghik,
which is the goddess of water,
love, fertility, and beauty.
And next summer, I am definitely
hoping I can go to Armenia
and stay at the
Armenia Marriott Hotel Yerevan.
And if I can be there, during Vardavar,
during the water fight of the year,
then that would be perfect,
because I can just walk out of my hotel
and there's the fountain and I can get drenched,
and then just walk right back into the hotel and carry on.
[Debby] My favorite holiday,
for sure, is Christmas,
and I think more so because I'm not home.
I live in LA and I'm not in Switzerland.
So Christmas is usually the time of the year
where I try to go home.
What helps me, even more, to get into the Christmas spirit
is our Christmas Market in Basel.
Just walking through the market,
you smell all the different smells from the foods
and the drinks, and we obviously have mulled wine,
which I think is kind of known here
or it's starting to get to be known here,
which is a hot wine with different spices, with cinnamon,
and you can throw apples into it.
I used to go every year as a child and as a teen,
so it's not that it's new every year.
It's always the same, usually the same people,
the same vendors, but it's still always magical.
It just is. I absolutely love it.
[Caroline] Debby, will you pick fondue or raclette
when you're at the market?
[Debby] Oh my gosh, I get this question a lot.
I think fondue.
So they're both very interactive,
with the people that are sitting around the table, you chat,
you talk, you exchange the food that's on the table
that goes with it, like potatoes or corn
or whatever sides that you like.
It's a really good dinner.
I can't wait to go back home
and have a traditional Swiss raclette or fondue.
[Katrina] In my family, I think the holiday
that we look forward to the most
is always Thanksgiving,
which is not, by any means,
a traditional Nigerian holiday,
but we've definitely made it into our own version
of the holiday.
For our Thanksgiving spread, we have your typical turkey
and your ham and your stuffing, but we'll also throw in
a lot of traditional Nigerian dishes,
so we'll have jollof rice, which is a staple in our food.
We'll have moi moi.
Moi moi is black-eyed peas
that is blended with different spices, like garlic, tomato,
a whole bunch of things, and then it's boiled
into a bean round.
It's really good.
We'll have efo riro.
Efo riro is a spinach stew, that is my favorite stew,
typically eaten with a fufu of some type,
whether it's pounded yam or amala.
You choose your fufu, but, yeah, it's an American tradition
that we've made our own.
[Jason] My favorite holiday
is Cambodian New Year.
It happens the weekend of April 13th, around that time,
and it's a lot of family time,
and there's a lot of culture time.
There's a little gambling as well.
We call it Klah Klok, where it's basically this sheet
that has different animals on it.
We have dice, where we put three dice in a bowl,
we shake it and people would
put dollars on the chicken
or on the crab,
and the dice would come out,
and if it has a chicken or a crab, you get a dollar
for each of the things.
[Caroline] Jason, do you bet on any particular animal?
Is one luckier than the other?
[Jason] I just love crab.
I think it's lucky,
so I would definitely, always try to bet on crab.
[Caroline] I'm glad we can virtually connect,
because sometimes it feels like you're just here,
and you can't travel and stuff, but I honestly feel like
I went to new locations, just by chatting with you,
so I traveled in my chair.
[Debby] I love that.
[Jason] Yeah, it's definitely great to be able to connect.
Sometimes we feel like we're different people,
but food brings people together.
You feel that connection over our love for food.
[Caroline] I think we can all agree that we can't wait
to come back together and travel when we're able.
We hope you're excited to some day experience these
and other holiday traditions in their home countries.