About this time every year, Sylvia Oxley and her family make the 12-hour trek from Dayton to the tiny town of Jamesville, N.C.

“The Jamesville Christian Church sits right in the heart of this small community, and it is in that precious church that you will find my family on Christmas Eve,” Oxley says. “The service is the same every year — Pastor Doug reading the Christmas story from the Scriptures, the congregation singing all the favorite old Christmas carols, each worshiper lighting the candle of the next person. The experience never gets old.”

As simple and unadorned as those Christmas customs may be, she adds, for her they encompass everything that makes up the true meaning of Christmas: family and friends, home, and the celebration and worship of the birth of Jesus.

Whether you’re observing Christmas Day, the sixth day of Hanukkah, or the African-American cultural holiday of Kwanzaa, which begins Monday, there are many opportunities for creating memorable traditions.

“Rituals tie us joyfully to the past and unite us in the future,” says Jennifer Trainer Thompson, author of “The Joy of Family Traditions.” “They give us a sense of security.”

That tradition can range from lining your walkways with luminarias for Christmas to frying potato latkes for Hanukkah. It might mean decorating your home with traditional African baskets and kente cloth for Kwaanza and inviting friends and family to share a traditional holiday feast.

A beloved holiday tradition may be as simple as a walk in the woods, an annual open house or a visit to a nursing home to bring joy to the elderly.

Suzanne and James Schmitz of Beavercreek have nine children and dozens of beloved Christmas traditions. When it’s time to select their live tree each year, all eleven members of the family pile into their 15-passenger van and head for the same spot to make that important decision. They count down the days in a number of ways: with a wooden Advent calendar, daily Bible readings and a ribbon chain of hard candies — the kids taking turns removing and eating one candy each day.

Their treasured Christmas stockings were handmade for each member of the family by a special family friend.

“Every Christmas my husband and I give each child an ornament,” Suzanne says. “We like to give ornaments that reflect something about Jesus or are symbolic of a special event in that person’s life during the past year. By the time the children are grown and have families of their own, they will have quite a few ornaments with which to begin decorating their own Christmas tree.”

A Secret Sibling gift exchange is always part of the fun.

“Sometimes we’ve made a Buche de Noel or Tourtiere (a meat pie) in celebration of French-Canadian ancestry on my side of the family,” says Suzanne.

Food and favorite recipes are a part of every holiday celebration. The origins of Kwanzaa can be traced to African harvest celebrations and a mix of traditional African foods and soul food are often served at community and family gatherings.

For best friends Linda Mannarino and Debbie Carroll, the Christmas season always includes a joint baking session.

Their tradition began decades ago when their kids were little and the women began making gingerbread houses with their daughters. Both had baked with their own mothers when they were children. Mannarino always loved baking with her Italian grandmother and her sisters.

“After the girls lost interest in the houses we started with chocolate covered caramel pretzels rods and have been making them ever since,” says Mannarino, who lives in Oakwood. “It gives us a few hours of girlfriend time together during the busy holiday season and the ability to make the pretzels and give them as gifts for our other friends.”

Thompson says ongoing rituals also provide an ideal way to pass along values that are important to us.

Suzanne and George Vlachos are thrilled to be sharing their favorite holiday customs with their toddlers for the very first time. Their daughter and son, ages two and three, were adopted from Russia last year so this is their first holiday season with their family in America.

“We’re so excited!” says Suzanne, who is determined to focus less on the gifts and more on the celebration with family and friends.

She’s teaching the Hanukkah blessings to her children just as her own parents taught them to her when she was growing up in Massachusetts. On one night of Hanukkah, she plans to select a children’s charity and donate the money that would have been spent on her kids. When Emily and Matthew are old enough, they’ll pick their own charity.

The children are also learning about Christmas from their dad and their 15-year-old sister, Alexia. He’s Greek Orthodox, she’s Catholic. The Christmas tree in their historic Kettering home is filled with ornaments that have been collected over the years and bring back wonderful memories of a particular place, a person, a trip.

For the past 26 years, Gaile McLemore has collected and sold an eclectic mix of international items in her Cachet G gift gallery in downtown Dayton. Many of the items, she says, are from Africa and ideal to give for Kwanzaa.

“The main thrust for the holiday is to give something you’ve made yourself, but if that’s not possible, you can also give something handmade by someone else,” she says. Her suggestions include an African mask or statue, colorful fabric, or a kinara, the candle holder that’s lit each night.

“Kwanzaa is really a very family-oriented celebration and it involves passing traditions down from parents to children,” McLemore says.

For those facing life’s challenges — the loss of a job, the death of a loved one, a divorce — traditions can be a life raft.

“They bring comfort,” says Thompson. “It’s reassuring to know in a world where the ground may be changing beneath your feet, there’s something that remains the same.”

Carrie Mueller, special events director of the Miami Valley chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association, says family holiday traditions can trigger emotional memories for people with memory loss and can also remind them of physical tasks that they can still do, sometimes quite well. 

“Use all five senses,” she advises relatives. “It’s the smell of cookies baking, the scent of pine, wassail, the feel of pine needles, holding ornaments or other holiday decorations. It’s the sound of bells, carols, ho-ho-ho, music and the taste of special holiday food and beverages.”

Physical memories, she says, can be triggered by using a rolling pin, kneading dough, dancing, playing an instrument or wrapping presents.

Pat Settles of Miami Twp., has been a caretaker for her husband, Jack, since 2003 when he began treatment for Alzheimer’s. She does everything possible to include him in holiday celebrations.

“We try to do all of the same things at any kind of family holiday,” she says. “We go to church on Christmas Eve, have Christmas music playing, our children will come. On Christmas morning, we bake blueberry muffins and he helps me bake. He likes to clean up the kitchen.”

She knows her husband enjoys the celebration.

“I could tell him I could do it myself,” she says, “but he likes to be part of something, not a spectator.”

That’s exactly what traditions are all about: they aren’t a spectator sport. And they should never become a chore.

“Don’t feel that you have to do every single tradition you’ve ever done in the past,” concludes Thompson. “It’s most important to keep it simple. Keep it about quality time.”

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2440 or MMoss@DaytonDailyNews.com.