With the holiday season just around the corner, the La Casita Cultural Center is celebrating Christmas traditions with their own twists.

La Casita’s annual ¡Fiesta De Navidad! – a Caribbean-style Christmas dinner — will take place Friday from 6 to 9 p.m. The free event will be hosted at the La Casita Cultural Center at 109 Otisco St. in Syracuse, where guests can expect to listen to Caribbean music during the party.

This year’s event will feature performers from La Casita itself as well as the wider Central New York community. Plena music from Rochester-based Pleneros D’ Borikén, Spanish guitar and song from local performers Liamna Pestana & Daniel Yost of Tropos and viola performance from La Casita’s musical director Aleksandre Roderick Lorenz are set to perform. There will also be dance performances from Syracuse University’s Raices dance troupe, as well as Puerto Rican bomba from La Casita’s Danza Troupe.

The dinner will be catered by both Syracuse University Food Services and Jandy, a local restaurant. The decision to feature Caribbean food is a reflection of the demographic makeup of central New York. Tere Paniagua, La Casita’s executive director, said that the majority of Hispanic and Latinx people in the region come from Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic.

“The idea is to make people feel like they feel at home,” Paniagua said.

The celebration is one of the organization’s biggest events of the year. La Casita’s programming coordinator, Luma Trilla, said it is intended as a thank-you to family and community members who have been involved with the organization throughout the year, as well as an opportunity to reach out to those in the university and the wider Syracuse community who may not be familiar with La Casita.

Monica McLean, the office coordinator for La Casita in SU’s Office of Cultural Engagement, has worked with the organization for six years. She said that during her six years, she’s seen the event become more accessible to a wider audience — in its outreach and awareness among non-Hispanic students, and in providing accommodations to individuals with disabilities.

Paniagua said the focus of the event is not primarily about the food or the performances, but using both to create a fun and welcoming environment.

“You cannot separate one from the other,” Paniagua said. “You cannot have an event like that without food. Not in this community and not in any party I would ever have in my house.”

The staff of La Casita are committed to fostering that feeling of home for their community, Trilla added. She remembers a previous year’s ¡Fiesta de Navidad! event where she coached the SU catering staff on how to make authentic Puerto Rican dishes.

“One of the students was almost in tears because it tasted like home,” Trilla said. “I think that was a really cool thing — making them feel and think of home and relive their home memories.”

Published on December 5, 2018 at 10:33 pm