Health Sciences faculty adapt holiday traditions to desert
From a 15-foot-tall saguaro to a taste of Puerto Rico and Hannukah traditions, ringing in the holidays means uniting family and community.
Forget chestnuts roasting on an open fire. And, of course, Jack Frost isn’t doing any nose-nipping around here.
Which is just fine because University of Arizona Health Sciences faculty members have their own unique twists on the traditional holiday season, ranging from a super-sized steel saguaro to Hanukkah churros and an authentic Puerto Rican nochebuena held smack in the middle of the desert.
Have yourself a merry, not-so-little Christmas
Curtis Thorne, PhD, and his wife, Jamie, knew exactly what they were getting into seven years ago when they moved their family into Winterhaven, a historic Tucson neighborhood known for its annual, two-week holiday festival that attracts 200,000-plus visitors to see its magical decorations.
Curtis Thorne, PhD, holds the arm of a 15-foot-tall metal saguaro in a workshop.
Photo courtesy of Curtis Thorne
Thorne had the perfect idea for their display.
“Because I’m from Texas, I like things big,” said Thorne, an associate professor in the University of Arizona College of Medicine – Tucson’s Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine and a member of the U of A Cancer Center. “And as far as I knew, the neighborhood didn’t have a giant saguaro. Being in Tucson, it needed a giant saguaro.”
Make that saguarho…ho…ho.
Thorne reached out to Matt Kaplan, PhD, a U of A Functional Genomics Core manager and friend who enjoys welding in his free time, to see if he wanted to tackle the project. The two spent three weekends making the 15-foot-tall cactus, which has become an iconic image of the holidays in the neighborhood.
“I see pictures of it around. They pop up on social media,” said Kaplan, who began welding 20 years ago. “It really makes me smile.”
The duo added metal mountains to Thorne’s roof and last year upgraded the saguaro’s light display to programmable LEDs.
“I have an app where I can change colors from my phone,” Thorne said. “I can be across the world, and I can change the color.”
Which comes in handy since the saguaro, once assembled, is so heavy it takes five people to move. It will spend Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day and the Fourth of July in the front yard until Thorne and Kaplan can weld together a dolly that’s sturdy enough to make the oversized cactus more portable.
Thorne said people ask him all the time if he’s tired of the additional Christmas chaos of thousands of visitors traipsing through his neighborhood. He said, in fact, that it’s quite the opposite.
At a time when many people feel busy, disconnected and barely know their neighbors, it’s an enjoyable, close-knit two weeks for the community.
“The festival is this joyous event that brings everyone out into their front yards at the same time,” Thorne said. “We’re all working toward a common goal. Everyone’s happy. Everyone’s excited. We’re helping each other out and that just brings the entire neighborhood together.”
The festival of latkes
Nicole Yuan, PhD, MPH, who is Chinese-American, didn’t grow up lighting a menorah, spinning dreidels or savoring Jewish recipes passed down for generations.
Churros dusted with cinnamon sugar are a holiday treat.
Photo courtesy of Nicole Yuan
Yuan, an associate professor and program director of Health Behavior and Health Promotion in the Department of Health Promotion Sciences at the U of A Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health, converted to Judaism shortly before marrying her husband, Jerel Slaughter, PhD, a professor of management and organizations at the U of A Eller College of Management, 21 years ago.
“I’m Jewish by choice, so I didn’t grow up with these traditions from my grandparents or my parents,” she said.
Instead, she and Slaughter have had fun creating their own special rituals with the help of their children, Olivia, 15, and Jake, 12.
“We’ve been finding the things we could do as a family that everybody could enjoy,” Yuan said.
Not surprisingly, food plays a pivotal part in the Yuan-Slaughter Hanukkah celebration. Both of them enjoy cooking, and Olivia loves to bake, so she offers plenty of input on desserts. And while they put contemporary spins on dishes — air-fryer churros, anyone? — the one recipe that never changes and makes the table every year is latkes.
“I think I love them more than my husband,” said Yuan, who prefers her latkes topped with sour cream while the rest of the family opts for applesauce.
Yuan relies on a foolproof recipe from a friend that turns out potato pancakes with perfectly pillowy middles and shatteringly crisp edges that you can’t resist picking at as soon as they’re plucked from the cooking oil.
Another important part of their celebration is the lighting of the menorah. The family has acquired several, passed down from family and received as gifts. But Yuan is partial to one that’s a simple wooden board with hot-glued hex nuts that serve as candle holders. Her kids crafted it in daycare at the Tucson Jewish Community Center. What it lacks in style, it more than makes up for in sentimental value.
“There’s so much melted candle wax that is built up on the board that you can’t even see the wood anymore,” Yuan said. “It’s this beautiful mess of wax, and I just love that.”
’Twas the noche before Christmas
Alejandro Vazquez, PharmD, judges a grocery store not by the freshness of its produce or its customer service but by the size of its Goya section.
Goya Foods, the largest Hispanic-owned food company in the United States, offers everything from coconut water to frozen empanada dough. It is known for its wide selection of Caribbean ingredients, like gandules, or pigeon peas, which are paired with yellow rice and are critical to the Puerto Rican feast he hosts every year for others away from home and loved ones.
When Vazquez, an assistant clinical professor in the Pharmacy Practice and Science Department at the U of A R. Ken Coit College of Pharmacy, and his wife, Jessie, relocated from Bradenton, Florida, to Phoenix in 2020, the only experience they’d had with the sprawling desert city was on a layover on the way to Hawaii. Now it was home. Though they loved Phoenix, it felt lonely around the holidays. The Vazquezes sought comfort in cooking.
“Food, for me, is my closest connection to my culture,” said Vazquez, whose parents taught him how to make Puerto Rican specialties before he left for college.
They decided to host a traditional nochebuena — which translates to “good night” and falls on Christmas Eve — and invited newfound friends from the outdoor fitness classes the couple attends.
“For Puerto Ricans, Christmas Eve is really more important,” said Vazquez, explaining that this is family time that kicks off with a big meal followed by midnight Mass and the opening of presents.
Nochebuena, Vazquez-style, starts around 5 p.m. with charcuterie, dinner at 6 and a fireside White Elephant gift exchange while Christmas movies play in the background. The centerpiece of their feast is pernil, a pork shoulder slathered in a wet rub of olive oil, garlic, salt, pepper and oregano that is slow roasted until the meat falls off the bone and the skin crackles.
The smell that wafts through the house is irresistible to the couple’s two cats and dog, but Jessie is the bigger problem.
“My wife is the one who tries to steal food, and I have to kick her out of the kitchen,” Vazquez said with a smile. “Every now and then, she’ll sneak something through.”