Photo provided by Brianna MacPherson: “My family and I made Christmas cookies.”
The holiday season has been completed, but due to COVID-19 and social distancing many holidays traditions and plans had to be altered. Still, COVID didn’t stop many of our Huskies from celebrating with family and lots of food!
The Washington faculty and student body shared their favorite and most memorable dishes from their holiday celebrations. Hot chocolate has been the flagship beverage of the winter holidays for years and multiple Washington students agree. It is made by mixing cocoa powder or chocolate with heated water or milk and typically some kind of sweetener. Hot chocolate was first brought to the United States by the Dutch, and colonists started selling it in 1755. Ever since then, the beverage has been associated with cold weather, winter, dessert, and, of course, Christmas. One student loves eating gingerbread with their hot chocolate. Gingerbread cookies are another favorite winter snack. They are made with a mix of unsalted butter, brown sugar, molasses, egg, pure vanilla extract, all purpose flour, baking soda, salt, ground ginger, ground cinnamon, ground allspice, and ground cloves. The first recorded mention of gingerbread being baked was in 1793, and it has been a staple around the holidays since. Jewish Huskies also stated that they look forward to Latkes for the winter holidays. Latkes are typically made of potatoes, onion, eggs, flour, salt, pepper, and oil. They are known as a Hanukkah food and are meant to symbolize the miracle of Hanukkah, where the oil of the menorah of the second temple of Jerusalem was able to stay lit for eight days when there was only enough oil for one day.
Photo provided by Jacob Mogey: “Frying latkes for Hanukkah.”
The many tasty foods of the winter holidays also come with great memories. Here are some of our favorite stories from the submissions:
One Husky’s story goes as follows: “Driving my Dad’s Jeep off-road in the snow with him and his Search and Rescue squad. We were on the Rubicon Trail and were just able to hang out together, drive over some snow and boulders, enjoy the view, and talked about some survival methods. I ended up learning how to create a snow cave for shelter.”
Another Husky’s memory is really wholesome: “When our daughter used her own money (she was in college working part time) to buy us Warriors tickets for the day after Christmas. Great seats, and a dinner certificate to go with. It wasn’t so much the gift but the lengths she went through to keep it a secret (she didn’t have a credit card) — she borrowed Grandma’s and paid her back…and early Christmas morning she downloaded the ticket voucher onto dad’s phone and put his phone in a box and wrapped it. So cute.”
It is currently Amal Afsal’s senior year at Washington High School. He was born and raised in Fremont, California. For his third and final year at the Hatchet, he will be the news editor. Amal enjoys writing about a variety of topics at the Hatchet, but prefers News and Opinions articles. In his free time, Amal enjoys playing video games while also occasionally watching television and browsing Reddit. He enjoys playing Badminton at WHS’s open gym and is employed by the restaurant, iniBurger. Amal wants to go to community college and transfer to a university within a couple of years.