CHERISHED TRADITIONS KEPT YEAR TO YEAR.

Byline: Carol Bidwell Daily News Staff Writer

It's no accident that during the darkest month of the year, we celebrate some of the world's favorite holidays - Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa - all revelries filled with light and hope.

All three celebrations have their roots in a benevolence too often overlooked in today's busy world - a prayer for peace, love and good will toward all. Gifts are exchanged, special foods are prepared and eaten, and families gather as they have for years - for generations - to celebrate.

And while families may celebrate the Fourth of July at the beach one year, the mountains the next, no one dares tamper with the traditions that surround the December holidays - particularly Christmas.

``If Christmas changed every year, we would all be angry,'' clergyman Clark Morphew wrote in ``The Book of American Traditions.''

``Clip one whisker from Santa's beard, and half the population would be outraged. In fact, it is that sameness that makes Christmas such a noble holiday. In a world where not much can be counted on to stay the same, Christmas does. And it's celebrated with pure American gusto precisely because we have seen it come and go for so many years. It's like an old friend coming for a visit.''

Here's how some Valley residents celebrate that traditional visit from their ``old friend.''

Welcome `inn': Lorraine Soo Storch of Lancaster harkens back to the first Christmas with a tradition rooted in ancient Europe. ``At the stroke of midnight Christmas Eve, I open my door ever so slightly with a lit candle in my hand that signals to St. Joseph and Mary there is room in `my inn' for them,'' she wrote. ``I feel I bring their blessings to myself and family and never fail to open my inn door for this Holy Family.''

A garden blooms: When Darlene Gordon of Northridge moved to California, her talk of putting up her ``Christmas garden'' mystified her friends and neighbors. It seems that's Baltimore-speak for assembling train sets beneath the Christmas tree. ``When I was a child, my dad never started setting up the Christmas garden until my sister and I were sound asleep so we wouldn't see Santa doing his magic,'' Gordon wrote.

``My father ... built the 4-by-8-foot platform that my husband and I have used for all of our 35 years of marriage. It includes metal cars, artificial trees, old billboards, antique street lights, handmade houses and many other articles that are over 70 years old. The focal point of the garden is two Lionel trains from my husband's and my childhood that are over 50 years old. When I married in 1962, my dad gave the platform to my husband and said, `It's your turn to carry on the tradition for my little girl.' It wouldn't be Christmas without it in our home.''

Tamale party: Rachel Serrano of Pacoima wouldn't consider it Christmas without the annual tamale-making party that includes her parents, five brothers and four sisters, husbands, wives, 28 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. First, comes the preparation of the corn husks, the masa dough and the fillings. Then comes the family assembly line.

``However many people fit around the table start spreading the masa on the corn husks, filling with meat, folding closed and placing them in a big roasting pan. Everyone has to help because if you don't make any, you don't get to eat any. We work in shifts, and when you get tired, there is always someone ready to take your place. When the big roasting pan is full of uncooked tamales, my mom covers it with a wet kitchen towel and top and puts it over two burners on the stove.

``Meanwhile, more tamales are being made, more family arrives, we sing Christmas carols ... and some family members play instruments, such as the violin, keyboard, clarinet and harmonica. Pop is usually the first one to test the tamales for doneness. When he says `OK,' we all eat.''

Jammie time: Christmas was always a strain on the budget when Joyce Reitz's North Hollywood family was growing up. Sometimes there were few presents under the tree for her three small daughters, but there was always one constant.

``Christmas morning always brought oohs and aahs and, as most families, we would capture these moments on film,'' she wrote. ``I didn't want my children's Christmas memories to be tarnished by pictures of them in faded, outgrown pajamas. So every Christmas Eve, as each girl was allowed to open one present of her choice, she was also given a special package to open from Mom. There was always a brand new pair of pajamas to wear the night before Christmas. Today, some 30 years later, my daughters still look forward to their Christmas Eve present from Mom.''

Floored for Christmas: A Christmas Eve ``picnic'' beneath the tree that started as a way to control a wiggly, excited toddler has evolved into a tradition in the home of Cindy Grippe of Burbank.

``As the years have gone by and we've had two more children, our Christmas Eve dinner must always be on the floor at the base of our Christmas tree,'' Grippe wrote. ``Even as difficult as sitting on the floor is for Mom and Dad - and our children, full-grown now - the children insist we must have our Christmas Eve picnic.''

Show me the money: About 10 years ago, Shirley Belinfante's parents decided that instead of buying Hanukkah presents for their grandchildren and great-grandchildren, they'd give them gelt (money) instead, wrote Belinfante of Northridge. But they wanted to present it in an inventive way.

``The first year, they decided to put the money in between slices of a loaf of bread. They opened approximately 15 loaves of bread and put the money in between the slices, then they gift-wrapped each loaf with Hanukkah wrapping paper ... There was bread all over the place while each one of the kids looked for all the money.

``The next year, the money was hidden in tissue boxes, in between the tissues. The next year, they put the money in corn flakes. After that, they put envelopes in balloons each kid got to pop open, and after that was a pinata the kids swung at to get the envelopes. We all look forward to what this wonderful grandpa will do this year.''

It's a dill-y: Tami Herrington of Moorpark and her family have revived an Old Country yuletide tradition that has her two sons hooked.

``When the Christmas tree is decorated, a special ornament - an old-fashioned German pickle ornament - gets hung on the tree, right out front so Santa can see it. Yes, it looks like a big, fat juicy dill! On Christmas Eve, when Santa visits, he takes the ornament and hides it elsewhere in the tree and places a small gift on the mantel for the `finder.' We started this tradition when my oldest son Christopher, now 9-1/2, was 5 years old. His favorite part of the holiday is finding the pickle and getting the present that Santa left. This year, he'll have competition from Alex, who is 3-1/2. The boys are already planning their strategy on finding that pickle.''

Last-minute shopping: Gift-giving was ugly about 10 years ago when the younger brother of Simi Valley's Diana Hanna whipped through his shopping in an hour on Christmas Eve afternoon. The whirlwind shopping excursion left him with two hours to match the presents he'd bought with the list of recipients and get them all wrapped and tagged.

``He ended up giving our dad a plastic toy action figure called the Inhumanoid that looks like one of the menacing trees in the movie `Snow White,' '' Hanna wrote. ``It has glowing green eyes, clawed branches, a gaping mouth and it expands vertically in the middle to make it taller and more scary-looking ... Needless to say, this wasn't what Dad had in mind for Christmas ... We all had a hearty laugh and thought that was the end of it.

``What we didn't know was that our mom had hidden the Inhumanoid away. To my complete susprise, my husband and I received it as one of our presents the next year. We wrote our names and the year on the bottom of its tree trunk, and it has been popping up every year since, as whoever received it last passes it on the next year.''

A theme party: Every year, Nina M. Miller's family Christmas celebration threatens to outdo the one before.

``Our meal is never traditional,'' wrote Miller of Canyon Country. ``Each year, my stepmom Wilma prepares a unique theme. She's done Chinese, followed by a fondue feast, and one year she attempted Hawaiian with a whole pig to roast in the ground. We wore the leis and had the umbrellas in our drinks, but finding a pig small enough to roast turned to be mission impossible. We had fun anyway.''

Purely ornamental: Sharon Southard of Burbank makes an annual tradition of creating special ornaments for each of her children, other family members and friends.

``Our children each had at least one for every year they are old; I put their names and the year on each ornament. As each child moves to their own home, they take their ornaments with them. I think I miss the little angel sitting on the half-moon the most. It was my first-born's first ornament in 1959. When he left home, he was 19, and 42 ornaments went with him. We have four children - I'm glad they didn't all move out the same year.''

Woodsy aroma: For Frances E. Riggle of Burbank, who celebrated her 85th birthday on Dec. 18, that date will always be associated with Christmas and with the North Carolina pine forests where her mother grew up.

``When I was a very small child, I remember my mother receiving an enormous cardboard box a week before Christmas,'' Riggle wrote. ``It often arrived on my birthday. We would open the box and the aroma was Christmas. It smelled like all the Christmas trees in the world, all packed inside. The box was from my mother's mother and aunts, who had acres of fir trees, and some of the limbs had been packed inside. There were enough for over the windows and doors of our house, and we always decorated our whole house on my birthday, including our ceiling-high Christmas tree. Our house smelled like a piney woods 'til New Year's Day.''

Picture-perfect gifts: At Ardis Money's North Hollywood home, packages under the Christmas tree weren't always what they seemed.

``Since my son was a teen-ager (he's 40 now), I often bought him things he needed before Christmas came - a jacket, special shoes, school equipment, pajamas,'' Money wrote. ``But I always said, `I'll get it now, but remember, it's a Christmas present.' So when Christmas came, I would cut out pictures of the items he already got, put them in a box, separately gift wrap them - and always got him some more things besides. As he opened his gifts, he laughed at the reminder that he had gotten it earlier. Now, it still goes on, and he just groans, `Oh, Mom, no!' ''

It's showtime: For nearly as long as anyone in Martha Blessington-Padilla's family can remember, a highlight of the family Christmas celebration has been a play acted out by the family's children. It started as a simple stairway tableau in the 1920s in Savannah, Ga., then grew more elaborate as the family grew. After a lavish dinner, ``all the younger grandchildren were shuffled off to a bedroom for cast selection and costuming,'' the Sunland resident wrote. Adults acted as the audience.

``The cast members dressed as shepherds, wise men, the Holy Family and one angel and were led into the dining room and positioned in a Nativity scene in front of a dark blue curtain covered with stars. The sliding doors (between rooms) opened, and I can still see the shadowy, smiling faces of my relatives. Behind us, from the darkened kitchen, an aunt or cousin would begin: `And it came to pass ...,' followed by the song, `Oh, Little Town of Bethlehem.' The whole Nativity passage would be read, interspersed with songs. During this 45-minute period, a hush would fall over us, and the specialness of the night touched us all.''

Little bit of both: Barrie Silverberg-Rubino, who is Jewish, and her husband, a Catholic, compromise when it comes to the December holidays by finding a holiday tree shaped more like a bush than a Christmas tree.

``Through the years, we collected items to hang on the tree from places we've visited. Often, it's a key chain or a spoon with the name of the place on it. Also, every year I make something to hang on the tree - either in needlepoint or counted cross-stitch, putting the year on it. We use blue and white garland and other Hanukkah items to reflect our family's faith. Our son's first Hanukkah was when he was 2 months old; we started a tradition of putting his picture on the tree ... along with pictures of our pets.''

Homemade bread: Bonnie Kleidosty of Northridge has been making pumpkin bread annually since she was married in 1965, giving about 30 loaves to family, friends, neighbors and co-workers. There's always enough left to enjoy on Christmas Eve and Christmas morning while opening presents under the tree.

``Several years ago, about three weeks before Christmas, I had a car accident,'' Kleidosty wrote. ``My youngest daughter was 12 at the time. Stacey was so concerned that I wasn't going to be able to make our traditional pumpkin bread that she volunteered to make it all herself - and she did. That year, our youngest daughter saved our family tradition.''

CAPTION(S):

4 Photos

Photo: (1) Come Christmas morning, Christopher Herrington, 9, of Moorpark will be looking for the pickle hidden on the tree by Santa, an old custom embraced by his family.

(2) A gag that keeps getting passed around Diana Hanna's family, the Inhumanoid monster spends the holidays with a different relative each year.

(3) The children in Shirley Belifante's Northridge family unwrap their Hanukkah gifts to find money tucked inside, a surprise that's been going on for 10 years.

(4) Darlene Gordon's father used to set up a Lionel train display after she and her sister went to bed on Christmas Eve, and now she and her husband carry on the tradition.