While Associate Artistic Director Moe Yousuf and Community Producer Victoria Linchong both have immigrant parents, their holiday traditions were very different growing up. Intern Robert Feffer interviewed Moe and Viva to learn more about Taiwanese holiday traditions with Viva’s family and Christmas in Miami with Moe’s family.

Robert Feffer – Growing up, what did the holidays look like?

Victoria Linchong – My parents never celebrate any holiday. I mean, first of all, if they came home at 8 o’clock at night that was really early. We were latchkey kids. We came home by ourselves, let ourselves in, cooked our own meals… The only holiday [my parents] ever celebrated was Lunar New Year when we would go to Chinatown and have dim sum together and walk around. So Christmas and Thanksgiving was always sort of like, “Well, what do we do?” Usually, the food we had was hot pot. That was the holiday food. That was always kind of special.

Moe Yousuf – Where would you go?

VL – We would do it at home.

MY – You’d do it at home?

VL – Hot pot at home was one of the few home meals I could remember from my childhood. We never ate at home. It would be in this big pot that my mother had from Taiwan that you plugged in. There would be broth in it and then a whole bunch of raw stuff to put into it. And then the Taiwanese way of having hot pot is that the sauce is really important. You had to put an egg in it, so you would have a little egg on your plate, and shacha tsang, which is like Taiwanese barbecue fish sauce.

MY – You’d have the raw egg yolk and then you would put the barbecue sauce in and mix it together?

VL – Yeah, so you get this raw egg, and the idea is you crack the raw egg in this little bowl.

MY – The yolk and the white and everything?

VL – Yeah, the whole egg, and then you’d put in a good heaping teaspoon of shacha tsang, and then a heaping teaspoon of scallions in it, mix that shit up, and when everything was cooked, some soup would go into it too. So that’s how we used to have it. And then the raw stuff for the hotpot would be rice noodles, two or three different kinds of mushrooms, some kind of meat, I think it was pork but I actually I have no idea what it was. That would all go into the pot to be cooked and then you would just spoon yourself some and that was our holiday meal. So no turkeys, no ham, no anything like that.

MY – That sounds delicious.

Moe, what did the holidays look like for you growing up?

MY – Let’s see, there was a train set that we would put together. Like an old train set my grandfather had but it probably wasn’t as old as he was. On Thanksgiving day we would put up the Christmas decorations. My sister and I would put the train together on the dining room table. We were one of those families that never ate on the dining room table. We would put the train set on the table and fake snow and a drop of oil on the train engine and a little puff of smoke would come out.

VL – Awww.

MY – And we would take these two figurines of Santa Claus and Mrs. Claus, and we would put them together so they were kissing and we would put that in the middle of the table.

VL – Is this your grandfather from Pakistan or your —

MY– This is on my mom’s side so they were white. Recently, I did go visit some of my South Asian family in Syracuse for Christmas. I went into the garage and I got some coal from the barbecue bag and I got all my cousins — they’re a lot younger than me — and I was like, “I got you a present.” And I opened my hand and there was coal. And they just had no point of reference for it. They were like, “What does that mean?” I was like, “COAL, you know, like coal?” They were like, “We don’t know. Are you going to get us a Nintendo?” And I was like, “No.” [laughs] And we ate ham and we had turkey. We liked decorations but not that much. We never had a real tree because I’m from Florida. So we always had a fake tree, and it was a little white tree and it must have been like thirty years old and then we would climb over the car in the garage, it was always in a spot, we would take it down, set it up, put it away.

VL – We had a tree too and it was a fake tree also, because my parents are immigrants and they’re not gonna fuckin buy a real tree you know?

MY – In Florida because of the weather there’s no — I mean you can get a real tree but there’s no — it’s not like —

VL – You could get a palm tree!

MY – — it’s not like, the whole holiday vibe that happens up here and the like warm drinks and the cozy, it’s not like that. It’s a lot of cocaine and cigarettes.

VL – So that was the “snow” you guys were putting around the tree! Got it.

MY – Yeah exactly, lots of “snow” down there because of Miami. There was one year where I came home, I was older, and I had been drinking. And I started eating the ham that was prepared for Christmas dinner.

VL – Oh no!

MY – And then I wrapped it up and my grandma unwrapped it on the day and was like, there’s a chunk of meat just missing from it.

VL [laughs] – Moe got to the Christmas ham.

What do the holidays look like now that you’re older?

VL – I have a son, and when you have a kid it’s sort of like, what are the traditions you want to pass on? What do you think is important about the holidays? So yes, we got a tree, and I would always bring the kid to Rockefeller Center and do a tour around there. And then Nutcracker… I had a friend whose daughter was in the Nutcracker for a few years and that was something! And Bread and Puppet. Bread and Puppet is one of the oldest experimental theater companies. It was established in 1961 and they’re famous for these enormous puppets. They always come to Theater for the New City — the theater I grew up in — for Christmas. They do an adult show and a children’s show but I think the children’s show is better. The children’s show always ends with Peter Schumann, who must be like 90 now, getting on stilts that are ten feet tall. I’m always worried this 90 year old guy is going to fall off them. [thinks] I have no idea what I’m going to do this year. It’s not something I grew up with that much so I don’t have a very firm anything about it. Aside from you know, dinner with my son, I’m sort of like what else do you do? [to Moe] What about you?

MY – So there’s nothing that’s standard like over the past ten years. Since I’ve been in New York City I haven’t done the same thing twice. I’ve never been in the same place, or wherever. I’ve been a Christmas orphan a couple times, which is great. I love being a Christmas orphan. You’re just alone on Christmas Day. Being alone in New York City on Christmas day is actually amazing because I think it’s one of the few times there’s nobody out on the streets. On two Christmas Days, non-consecutive years, I did the Great Saunter. I walked around the circumference of Manhattan. It’s like a 34 miles walk. It was amazing. Both times it ended with eating dumplings in Chinatown and drinking a ton of beer. If you want to do this, you don’t have to do it on Christmas day, but you see the island in such a different way. Part way through, you’re in your head, you’re just thinking and you’re walking and all this stuff is happening. Then like five hours into it, six hours into it, that’s when your feet starts to hurt and other things start to happen and by the end of it you’re just sort of like —

VL – Dying!

MY – Just trying to get to –

VL – Dumplings!

MY – Prosperity Dumplings, right! But yeah, it’s amazing, yeah. That’s been the only thing I’ve done as a ritual for Christmas so far.

VL – Do you go home?

MY – I’ve done it a couple of times. I’ll be there this year. But I tend to not to. Home is where the heart is, Victoria.

VL – Yeah, exactly. I do orphan Thanksgiving at my friend Paige’s place. She has this enormous loft in Williamsburg, and it’s always like 50 people.

MY – Well, that’s a good question this year, just how will families come together or not or if it’s safe or not.

VL– Yeah, like this orphan Thanksgiving is obviously not going to happen this year because we can’t have 50 people together so what do you do? What do you do this year if you don’t have family to celebrate with?

MY – It’s gonna be lonely.

VL – We’re gonna have to walk around the perimeter of Manhattan.

MY – Eating a turkey leg.

This holiday season, the Target Margin family shares their special holiday recipes. Recipes for food — for celebration no matter where you come from — for looking ahead into the future. But the secret ingredient that we can’t do without is YOU. We depend on our staunch and generous donors bake the world a better place, to rise higher, to keep feeding the starter. Please consider giving a tax-deductible gift this season.