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Snapshots Tampa Bay
From Sugar Cookies To Hockey: How We Celebrate The Holidays And Build Community
Tampa Bay doesn’t get any snow, but the holiday spirit still shows up in big, joyful ways. We swap stories about the traditions that make December feel like home: sugar cookies baked with precision, a chaotic Christmas Eve Walmart run for secret stocking stuffers, and a pickup hockey morning that turns friends into family. Along the way we talk about blending cultures—Hanukkah with grandma, New Year’s memories from childhood, and the cozy sparkle of a Christmas tree—and how those layers create a season that feels rich and personal.
We also dig into what it means to rebuild rituals after military moves. When you’re far from relatives, traditions become portable anchors: a recipe card that crosses state lines, a running gag gift that resurfaces each year, or ice time rented so the kids can chase pucks while parents sip coffee and catch up. Tampa Bay’s an unlikely winter sports haven, and we celebrate the region’s thriving hockey scene, from busy rinks to youth programs that keep the game growing. It’s proof you can find winter magic in a sunshine city.
Most of all, we lean into joy over perfection. Opening stockings one at a time lets every laugh land. A casual skate reminds kids to love the game, not just train for it. And baking turns a crowded calendar into something warm and shared. Press play to pick up ideas you can borrow, adapt, or start fresh—then tell us your favorite tradition so we can try it next time. If the conversation warms your day, subscribe, share with a friend, and leave a quick review to help more Tampa Bay neighbors find the show.
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Hi everybody, and welcome to Snapshot Tampa Bay with Candace and Lisa. Get ready to dive into the exciting and colorful world of the greater Tampa Bay area. Whether you're sorting out a military mood, checking out the senior living scene, or just on the hunt for the coolest local spots, let's get started and have some fun.
Speaker 2:Hello there. It's Candace here with Lisa and David, our new team member you just met last week.
Speaker 1:Yes, we're so excited. But you didn't ask me, or you didn't say what we normally say.
Speaker 2:Hi Lisa
Speaker 1:hey!
Speaker 2:I got distracted by the new team member. I was trying to include. Well, we're excited to spend some time with you today. And today we're talking about our holiday slash Christmas traditions.
Speaker 1:Yes, we are. I love this time of the year. I love it.
Speaker 2:Well, you know I do.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah.
Speaker 2:I have obsessive Christmas disorder.
Speaker 1:So I know. And that was part of the interview for David that he had to kind of be in it. So don't worry.
Speaker 2:I've had Christmas up since November 1st. So yeah.
Speaker 1:I haven't, but I got it up this past week.
Speaker 2:Well, you've got a kid that has a birthday in November.
Speaker 1:I do, yes. He's November the 19th. So we always decorate after. Yes. So we're going to talk about Christmas traditions. And we all have different ones. So it's really kind of cool. So why don't you go ahead and start, Candace, and t alking about your cookies.
Speaker 2:Cookies. So yeah, my family always made sugar cookies growing up. And I kind of, my husband and I don't have kids, so it's hard to like make sugar cookies with just for you, then you end up eating all of them. So as a retail manager, I would then make them for my staff and bring them in the week of Christmas as well. And I miss doing that because I don't really have that anymore. But we do now.
Speaker 3:You're in luck because my kids happen to love anything that sounds like cookies.
Speaker 2:But you're like the old-fashioned sugar cookies with the cutouts, and then you decorate it with all of the stuff on top.
Speaker 1:And my mom makes cookies for everybody. She makes pignolis though.
Speaker 2:I love making sugar cookies. Oh, they're so it's a lot of work, but I loved doing it. Like I loved doing it. And I love baking for I, as you know, my husband's a chef. I don't cook. I can't cook. Like I can't cook.
Speaker 1:But you can bake.
Speaker 2:I can bake though. And talking to my husband and other chefs, I realized why I'm really good at baking. Because I need exact measurements, and cooking is not really, even when you follow a recipe, there's always adjustments you need to do. And I'm not good at adjusting. I end up with too much salt or not enough of something.
Speaker 1:I don't know if you know this about me. I don't use recipes.
Speaker 2:My husband doesn't either.
Speaker 1:I don't use them.
Speaker 3:I don't I don't either when I cook.
Speaker 1:Well, you and I are very similar to the case. Yes, and my husband is very similar to Katie.
Speaker 2:So you guys cook and I'll do the baking. I'll bring the cookies.
Speaker 3:My wife's a fantastic baker, by the way, too.
Speaker 2:I realize I just I'm not really good at winging it. But I'm a very type A personality, so there's always a list and there's always exact measurements, and there's it's always in order. I can't just like whip things up.
Speaker 1:Don't get me wrong, I have a list.
Speaker 2:But there's not actual measurements, the list of the ingredients.
Speaker 1:No, I know. No measurements.
Speaker 2:And my husband will be like, well, just put in a little bit. I'm like, well, what's a little bit?
Speaker 1:Except when it comes to butter.
Speaker 2:Oh, butter and bacon. My husband loves bacon, so but yeah, I love like I miss doing that. I haven't done them probably for three years now.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Well, we should we should change that.
Speaker 2:We should change that this weekend.
Speaker 1:And we should test them. Yes. Okay. Totally.
Speaker 2:Okay. I can I can make some maybe this weekend and bring them in next week.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I love I love making Christmas cookies. I have I have all of the cookie cutters and I have the stuff.
Speaker 3:I I think food in general is one of the big staples to most holiday traditions. Oh, yeah. For just about, you know, all kinds of different cultures and families and things like that. So definitely can relate for sure.
Speaker 1:Well, and like in my household, I have a number of different nationalities in my household. Um, so my husband never celebrated Christmas. He grew up in a Jewish household. He never celebrated it before. But actually, coming from former USSR, he they didn't celebrate those holidays at all. They celebrated New Year's. So New Year's is his big holiday.
Speaker 2:I remember that. Yes.
Speaker 1:So Christmas is everything Christmas and all the traditions, he's like your traditions. And but no, they're his now, you know. And we have the kids and they do, you know, they do Hanukkah with grandma um as well as Christmas. Now they don't get all the gifts for Hanukkah because Lord knows I don't need all of that in my house. But yeah.
Speaker 2:So talking gifts. So your tradition is related to gifts.
Speaker 1:It is. So our tradition is kind of funny, and it's kind of annoying to other people, and I'm sure my mother and and in-laws as well. But what we do is we go Christmas Eve, everybody gets in the car, and we drive to Walmart, and each person has a person that they're buying for for the stockings, and so we're trying to avoid each other in the store and going, we're hiding, and we run around and we try to get stocking stuffers.
Speaker 2:S o each person of the family is assigned a different person.
Speaker 1:A different person. Okay, but the funniest thing is that when we first started doing this, my husband would buy like these big centerpieces and candles, and we're like, that's that's not a stocking stuffer because you just didn't understand. And so he bought these things for my parents, and my parents were like, Wait, this doesn't go in the stocking. So finally, he bought one of those stockings that's probably like five foot tall. So he could put you can put the stuff in there, but yeah, see, it it's really funny because we'll be in in in Walmart and it has to be Walmart.
Speaker 2:So it's the whole family, the parents too.
Speaker 1:Yes, parents, and sometimes his um his parents don't understand either. And it's wonderful because you get Christmas morning and you're opening up the stockings and you're like, What in the heck were they thinking? But it's so much fun. It's just fun because we do our stockings, we open one gift at a time and we all watch. Yeah, I want to see what everybody's getting. I don't want somebody to sit there.
Speaker 2:So are they nice gifts, or are they goofy gifts? Are they prank gifts?
Speaker 1:It's a mixture of everything because we have we have a Chia, we it's a Chia um uh plant. Plant. And it's one of the guys from Duck Dynasty. It's his it's his beard and his so we have been passing that from person to person for years. So don't tell anybody, but we have it this year, so it's going to somebody else in the family. Now, we cannot give it to my father-in-law because he will try to grow it. And he doesn't understand we don't open this.
Speaker 2:Oh, so it's never actually been opened.
Speaker 1:Never been opened. Still have I can't wait for it to become a collector's item.
Speaker 2:So you can sell it and make some money.
Speaker 1:Becaus e it still has the plastic wrap.
Speaker 3:What's it going for right now on ebay?
Speaker 1:I don't know but we call it the Chia Willy. Chia Willy. So we have a lot of traditions, actually. We really do. But yeah, Christmas Eve at Walmart, you know it's crazy. You know, Walmart employees want to get out of there. They want to be out of there so badly, and we're running around and hiding from each other.
Speaker 2:Retail people hated those last-minute shoppers on Christmas Eve. It was usually mostly men. I'm gonna be honest. For those that can't see, he just looked up the chia willy, chia willy. Yeah.
Speaker 1:That's why I made sure I said from Duck Dynasty.
Speaker 3:What's really funny is is one of the things that I that I used to love to do as a kid, I say kid, as a teenager and into young adult, um, was go into the store when everybody else is in a mad rush, but not being in a rush myself and kind of having fun with it and navigating the parking lot, watching everybody lose their minds while I was on kind of my own timeline. I sort of, I always enjoyed being in the mix of that, but also knowing at the same time that that it wasn't quite as much of an emergency for me. So it is kind of kind of fun uh to kind of put yourself in that Christmas Eve fiasco shopping and seeing the rat race and the craziness.
Speaker 2:Although a former retail manager does not like to do that. I avoid the malls Christmas week entirely.
Speaker 1:I don't want to do it. But I'm the same as you because it in reality it's the one time of the year that I slow down. So the same for you?
Speaker 3:It it is, but only if I haven't procrastinated if I haven't procrastinated my preparation. So if by Christmas Eve I am good to go and ready, then then I enjoy it. But if I'm not, and I'm and it's stressful for me, then I then I just then I'm then it's about the mission, right? I'm mission, mission-oriented, let's get to the mission.
Speaker 2:There it is. There it is. We knew that was coming out eventually.
Speaker 3:I can only really relax when the work is done, you know.
Speaker 1:So well, I'm gonna tell you that today is December the 2nd. Um, that's when we're uh recording this. Um, I am done with my Christmas shopping. I'm done.
Speaker 2:I have eight nieces and nephews, and we just send them money now. They're at the age where I don't even try. Just send them money.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm done. And I'm so happy. I'm just so happy. And now I'm just like, I can just chill. Now I mean I go on Whatnot every day, you know,
Speaker 2:she's got an addiction.
Speaker 1:I do, I know I'm addicted to that.
Speaker 3:I have a little bit more work to do, so I think I'm behind you too.
Speaker 2:So we want to hear about your I you told us this before we start recording, and I love this. I think you should definitely revive this year.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. So, you know, we talked about last time my military background, and you know, when you move every three, four years, you're you're moving to places inevitably geographically separated from family and and loved ones. And so it was always hard Christmas time. I've been deployed on Christmas, you know, I've missed Christmases before, I've had to work uh on Christmas before. So um you sort of make family wherever you kind of go. And that kind of goes into the whole discussion of moving and things like that. And so one of the things that we that we started as kind of a tradition for my family, by virtue of our association with another awesome family in Phoenix before we we came to Tampa um during my last assignment in the military, was a non-military family, but a hockey family. And if for those of you that know hockey and know that it's far more than just a just a sport, it's it's really an entire culture and an entire family. It really is. And so it's just one of those things, and it's hard to describe, but if you're involved, you understand what I'm saying. So one of the hockey dads as was a coach with me with our kids, decided that they were gonna continue one of their traditions, which was to have some sort of pickup hockey game on Christmas Eve. Um, but in Arizona, it's sometimes hot, you know. So we rented the ice. And so a good friend of mine, Sean, uh, rented the ice and invited folks from his men's league team and then kids that we coached and the other coaches and their families. One of the dads was the organist for the Colorado, sorry, for the uh Arizona Diamondbacks baseball team. Nice. So he came and played organ music. We had Christmas carols, we brought breakfast, we got everybody out to the rink at about nine o'clock, 10 o'clock in the morning, and we skated for a couple of hours on the rented ice. We had families out there. It was hockey, pickup hockey, stick and puck hockey. Sean and I are goalies, we dressed as goalies, let the kids shoot on us. We had a grand old time. And and so that sort of that was such a success the first year we did it, that we did it every year we were there. And now Katie and I are here in Tampa trying to again establish our sense of family and and and our and our we get a lot of energy out of our friends and the people that we associate with and we share um passions with, like, like hockey and and our kids. So we want to do that again and we want to rent the ice. And so so my wife is um, she's not as as much of a hockey player as she just enjoys everybody else playing the game and seeing it. She does skate, so she's going through the steps now for us to rent the ice and invite groups out there and and have another event like that on Christmas Eve.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's real cool.
Speaker 3:Which really sets the tone. Um, you know, the kids are have typically been out of the school out of school for four or five days by the time Christmas Eve rolls around.
Speaker 1:Oh they need to get on the ice.
Speaker 3:And the energy is is is insane. And a lot of times the sports leagues are kind of closed down. If you're not traveling for tournaments and things like that, you're not really playing a whole lot of hockey leading up to Christmas. So it's really a cool opportunity to get some fellowship, get friends out there, you know, have breakfast and coffee and see the kids having fun. And and uh, and so that's that's kind of a tradition. And you know, and and years ago you you were often constrained on where you had ice, depending on where you live, but now you know, ice rinks and hockey are everywhere. In Arizona, Tampa, you know, Florida's become a hockey hotbed. Oh, yeah. For those of you that don't realize, yes. Uh, so I mean, it you know, look at look at who has won the Stanley Cup in the four out of the last six years, you know, so it's uh pretty awesome.
Speaker 1:Yeah. You know, um, if for those of you who don't know and are not in the Tampa Bay area, we have we have one rink that has five sheets of ice. We have another rink that's being built that's going to be a monstrosity. Um, but we have six um my different uh ice skating ranks uh here in the Tampa Bay area. We actually um have a lot of kids who are playing at the next level in other places. My son is in Boston um playing at the AAA level. We have a lot of really great kids and great programs. We have the Nest Hockey Academy here, that is actually a hockey academy. I'm gonna do a shout out because my son went there for two years before going to Boston. And um, so there's a lot of hockey, but um, I'm going off on the hockey thing, and this is about Christmas.
Speaker 3:Well, come on, come on now.
Speaker 2:I'm not even in to hockey and I'll come.
Speaker 1:Tell my tell my son to bring his skates.
Speaker 3:I think winter sports is is closely connected with this time of year, and I think that anybody that's a sports passionate family associates holidays with sports, and Thanksgiving tournaments are quite common in the hockey world, and so I think that they kind of go hand in hand and definitely. And not to mention the fact that in February we've got the Olympics coming up, which is also a really, really exciting thing that uh
Speaker 2:there's a lot of I didn't realize like winter sports that train here too. Up in Ocala, there's a speed skater from Ocala that there's a rink up there that she trains at. I mean, she's in Colorado now training with the team, right? Yeah, right. Yeah, but she's like from Ocala, she was in the news the other day. Yeah, so I didn't realize because I'm not in that world, how much training sports there are here in Florida, even for winter sports. Oh, yeah, because the ability to build something, right? Even though we don't have snow here.
Speaker 3:And I grew up in New York, and for those of us that are from winter areas where you actually have winter and snow and frozen ponds and things like that, you know, any anything you know, talking about to take it full circle to Christmas traditions, oftentimes we kind of pull from our childhood and what feels like Christmas. And for me, Christmas always felt like snow, hot cocoa, ice skating, those kind of very um hallmark kind of kind of things, right? And so when you're in a place like Florida and all the beautiful things that we have, you know, boating year-round, beach year-round, sometimes to kind of harken back to those Christmas traditions, you kind of line up.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So we were in Phoenix, same thing. You kind of want to pull from those things that sort of feel like Christmas. And for us, it was it was winter sports and skating.
Speaker 2:I love that and you're giving back to that community by doing that.
Speaker 1:Well, and not only that, too, um going back to the hockey thing, hockey can get really serious really quickly and really young. And so to just have a nice pickup fun, and that's not you want the kids to love it. I think that that's the thing. They need to love what they're doing if they're going to be doing this later. And so it's really great. And I will get an invitation because I will stalk you and make sure that we have it. My husband will put his goalie equipment on, my husband's a goalie.
Speaker 3:That's right.
Speaker 1:you know, so you guys can be at either net.
Speaker 3:If your son is in town, we need a ref. Maybe he can ref for us.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah.
Speaker 3:His coach probably won't let him play, but maybe he can ref for us.
Speaker 1:Why?
Speaker 2:Because he's up there now training and all serious.
Speaker 1:Nah...Let him have fun. That's another thing. Let him have fun too for him to keep loving the game. Because guys, I am so happy that we got to share some of the stuff. You know what? Please do me a favor. Put a comment, tell us some of your traditions. We would love to hear some of them because the more we grow with other people, I think the better off we are.
Speaker 2:You can highlight it. It might give somebody like something new if they don't have traditions. Oh, I like that idea. Yes, let's try that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think the Walmart one definitely.
Speaker 3:Cookies. Cookies by far.
Speaker 2:Cookies...Okay, I'm gonna make cookies this weekend, apparently. Yes, yes, you are. Well, until next time, may all your holiday traditions bring you joy and lead you closer to your happily ever after. Yes. I always stumble in the happily.
Speaker 1:Why? Why? I don't know. It's like happily ever after. Oh, there you go. You didn't stumble. There we go. Happily ever after. Bye.
Speaker 2:Bye. Bye.
Speaker 1:Thanks so much for joining Snapchat's Tampa Bay. Hit subscribe to catch our latest episodes and let us know in the comments what you want us to explore next. Keep loving the Tampa Bay vibes. See you guys soon.
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