Carmen Robles smiles as she surveys the four generations of her family assembled in her La Floresta garage on a recent Sunday afternoon. Conversation and laughter accompany the flying hands around the long worktables as her children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews and sister measure treats into plastic bags. Little children play nearby and an eight-day-old great-granddaughter sleeps in her mother’s arms.

‘Tis the season … for piñatas, one of Mexico’s favorite symbols of the holidays.

“The Twelve Days of Christmas” is an English carol first published in 1780 that enumerates  a series of increasingly grand gifts given on each of the 12 days of Christmas.

The decade-long Mexican Revolution divided a nation, left thousands dead and spawned an authoritarian political system that dominates society even today.    

Few activities were available when Phyllis Rauch moved to the lakeside area with her late husband Georg in 1976.  “Had there been more to do, Georg probably would never have written the memoir of his World War II experiences as an Austrian-born Jew inducted into the German Army,” she says.

Humor often translates inadequately into other languages, and can even fail to connect when crossing borders into countries that share the same lexicon.