Looking for a gift that provides a deeper meaning? This year will you consider making a gift to Puente in honor of a friend? 365 days each year, we live and work into the hope of a better world. Donate to Puente by midnight on December 20th and we’ll send a gift in your name.

Please give generously! 100% of all gifts benefit Puente’s holiday programs and new and increased gifts will be matched dollar for dollar by the Sobrato Family Foundation.

When Rita Mancera thinks of reasons to donate to Puente this holiday season, she thinks of the Mendez family, who live in Pescadero. The low-income family, whose names have been changed for privacy reasons, have three young children, 13, 11 and 3. Both parents work in agriculture, the mother works two jobs, but groceries and rent are still a stretch every month. Christmas presents are out of the question.

Thanks to the generosity of hundreds of donors, however, the Mendez family will receive four $50 holiday gift cards from Puente – one to buy groceries, and three to buy clothing or toys for their children at a department store.

“Even for people who can’t afford a big gift, giving a little means a lot for someone else. It means they can afford to have something they couldn’t before,” says Mancera, Puente’s Program Director. More than 140 low-income families will similarly benefit from Puente’s holiday outreach this year.

Omar delivers Christmas trees

Many will also observe Puente’s Pescadero Community Posada on December 20. Traditionally, the Posadas enact the journey of Joseph and Mary, remembering them as they went door to door in search of lodging and safe haven. Their journey is a reminder of countless other pilgrims that sought safety over the generations and those that refused them shelter. This powerful narrative takes different forms in every faith tradition as as a poignant reminder that we hold a collective responsibility to bring light to others, even in the darkest times.

The live Nativity procession will start at St. Anthony’s Church at 696 North Street at 5:30PM followed by the program at Pescadero Community Church. Participants will then end at the IDES Hall at 30 Stage Road where there will be music, food, raffle, and Santa Claus will be giving out stockings to the children stuffed with socks, hats, school supplies and little toys like Hot Wheels.

Last year more than 250 people came out to enjoy the celebration —  the procession and celebration were successful despite a drenching winter storm. This year, Puente anticipates as many as 300.

Pilgrims brave the rain

Puente invites donors to purchase items for its Christmas Stocking Project by clicking here.

Santa and the angel

The gift fairy

The Posada is, by far, Rev. Abby Mohaupt’s favorite time of year. Although her official position is Faith Community Liaison, at holiday time Mohaupt takes on the heavy-lifting role of inventory coordinator, as well as working with her contacts among Bay Area congregations to put their donations to the best possible use.

More than anything else, Mohaupt loves picking out the perfect gift for every person and occasion. In Puente’s case, her pleasure is amplified a hundredfold.

“In pastoral care we talk about having love languages. Mine is definitely gift giving,” she says. “I know I’m caring for someone when I’m giving them gifts, so I really love it – and I love doing it with my colleagues.”

This holiday season will involve the largest gift-giving effort Puente has ever undertaken. New donors and volunteers have stepped in, including a Muslim student at Notre Dame de Namur University who reached out to help pack gifts and volunteer with childcare during the Posada festivities. The student helped forge a new partnership between Puente and Notre Dame de Namur, and Mohaupt hopes it will lead to a similar connection with Peninsula mosques.

Thanks in large part to Mohaupt and a committed team of volunteers, many Puente participants will receive the perfect gifts this year. Puente’s English and Spanish learners will get a Spanish-English dictionary to study at home; women who get sweaty with Zumba will get toiletries; the children in Puente’s weekly Story Time program will get a reading book, toys, a coloring book and crayons.

Puente will supply 75 agricultural workers with flashlights, socks, towels, toiletries, heavy-duty jackets and sleeping bags. The men, who meet twice every week at La Sala, also need hats, socks and toiletries – items Puente donors can purchase by visiting a special wish list on Amazon.

Santa brings gifts for all

La Sala Christmas

Puente will also host its annual Hanukkah party at Pescadero Elementary School with dreidels and chocolate Hanukkah gelt (coins) for all.

Pescadero Elementary School students learn how to play dreidel

These holiday gifts help meet an urgent practical need, but they also hold a great deal of emotional resonance at the saddest time of year for many people who are far from home. Some locals without papers spend a soggy holiday alone on the coast while their kids, who were born here, go visit their grandparents and extended families and Mexico. Depression can creep in. Under those circumstances, even a hot meal and a winter coat can go a long way, says Mancera.

“It’s a time when families are used to being together, but they can’t be anymore. I think this season is really beautiful. I also think it’s really hard.”

Help fill Christmas stockings with school supplies, toys and personal items for the children and families served by Puente. Donations will be received through December 16.

Our wish lists are here and here. Better yet, go directly to mypuente.org and make a safe and secure online gift. Please give generously! 100% of all gifts benefit Puente’s holiday programs and new and increased gifts will be matched dollar for dollar by the Sobrato Family Foundation.

What’s it like to “celebrate” the dead? That’s the concept of Dia de los Muertos, a Mexican holiday devoted to the festive commemoration loved ones who have died –and the resurrection of their memories.

Puente helps the South Coast community remember its departed loved ones by presenting an entire month’s worth of Dia de los Muertos-themed art projects in October. The month culminated in a big gathering on October 24 where people decorated individual sugar skulls, using their own sense of whimsy. Many of the sugar skulls were displayed on Puente’s community altar on October 31, at the final Pescadero Grown! Farmers’ Market.

As evening fell on Pescadero, more than 60 locals sat at long tables draped with paper in the multipurpose room at Pescadero Elementary – mostly women and children. The room buzzed with happy conversation as budding artists added glass gems, glitter flakes, shiny paper, sparkles, and every-color Day-Glo icing to their sugar skulls.

Though the premise of the holiday is slightly sad, the art is a joyful pursuit, said Irma Rodriguez, a Pescadero resident who brought her two daughters with her. Rodriguez took on a look of intense concentration as she applied a big orange pair of glasses to her sugar skull, and a stylized pink flower on top.

She explained that the skull would honor her late mother and father.

“It’s sad because they’re gone, but the happy part is remembering them,” she said with a smile.

Rodriguez said the skull would be displayed on her home altar along with some of her parents’ favorite foods, including hot chocolate, a tamale, a banana, some water and a number of other items that summon warm memories.

Learning a new tradition

In Mexico, Day of the Dead is actually stretches over three days, from October 31 (All Hallows’ Eve) to November 2 (All Souls’ Day).

Some locals are familiar with the holiday traditions from growing up in Mexico. But it’s often new to their children, who were born on the South Coast.

Johnny and Wendy Lopez got to make their first sugar skulls this year, and learn about Mexican culture at the same time. Johnny, 12, made a ‘man at the beach’ with yellow sunglasses, a mustache and a little hat made out of foil. Wendy, 8, made a princess with brightly colored flowers adorning her brow.

Said Wendy, “I’m going to keep it for a year, hidden in the closet. I’m going to eat it when I’m in the third grade. It’s going to be delicious.” Wendy’s mother Veronica wasn’t too sure about that.

The art party was one of four free weekly art sessions organized by Puente’s energetic Youth Program Associate, Alejandra Ortega. She staged earlier events for locals to paint decorative platters and enjoy adding color and collage to ‘memory boxes’ – some in the shape of little coffins, in keeping with the Day of the Dead.

Artist and Puente staffer Alejandra Ortega

Art is therapeutic as well as fun, Ortega believes. Puente has previously used art projects and other group bonding exercises to combat the symptoms of maternal depression, which can crop up anytime, but are a particular concern in communities where women live in rural isolated housing. Depression also affects Latina teenagers at a higher rate than other groups.

“At least for the time that people are here, they forget about whatever else is going on their lives,” said Ortega.

A deeper meaning

Ortega devotes more than 30 hours a week to organizing each art project. In the case of the sugar skulls, this involved molding more than 100 pounds of refined sugar into 120 skulls and preparing 28 pounds of icing, which she made herself with confectioner’s sugar and coloring gels.

Ortega has a bachelor’s degree in fine arts and dreams of becoming a full-time art teacher. This is her third year of work on Dia de los Muertos, and the first year she included children as well as adults in the decorating parties. It added a new, slightly more chaotic dimension, but she liked it.

“Everyone’s skills are different, but they’re great. What everyone made is really unique.”

Some skulls had gold teeth, others tiaras. Each one was an expression of creativity and love – in honor of the people who are missing all the fun.

Those memories are what gives the project its deeper meaning, said Ortega.

“We want to know people’s lives, their traditions – and to find out who their project is dedicated to.”

The program was supported by the Bella Vista Foundation and the San Francisco Foundation Faiths Project.

Click here for more Dia de los Muertos photos.