BACKGROUND:

A family in Santa Ana, California celebrate the unique holiday of “Ricksmas” in which the extended family and family friends gather to celebrate a sort of counter-culture Christmas. The holiday is celebrated similarly to the American traditions of the Christmas in that there is an exchange of gifts, a Christmas tree, and a grand dinner to round out the night. Unlike Christmas, however, each gift has to follow a designated theme that changes from year to year. The holiday is also not celebrated on December 25th, but rather (like the theme) changes from year to year.

INTERVIEW:

My talk with my source, R, is as follows:

R: My dad’s name is Rick and the whole extended family on his side has kind of like a strange bond cause we’re all a little weird. Basically like a couple weeks before, a couple weeks after we have kind of a Christmas celebration called Ricksmas, cause that’s my dad’s name. Um… and so all the people on my dads side congregate and like some family friends and we have themed gifts every year; like it’s really weird how democratic it is like there’s a different person each year and then they cycle out for each year and they have a certain number of topics they’ll choose. Like sometimes its like… Oh god one time it was just X, like a gift could be something 10 like the roman numeral 10 or it could be like X the Ed Sheeran album. That’s kind of the whole thing I mean the rest is kind of like Christmas with a tree and a dinner but there’s like little tweaks to everything. But yeah that’s Ricksmas.