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There are no special traditions for me during the holiday season, other than exchanging Christmas cards and letters with friends throughout America and other parts of the world. Then it is with great anticipation that I await their greetings.

Some years I have gone to the pueblos for the Christmas dances, but many years I stayed home.

This holiday season began on Thanksgiving, with dinner at my granddaughter Rhiannon's home in the South Valley. She and her husband and two sons played host to her parents, brother and me at a turkey dinner with all the trimmings.

After a champagne toast by the adults and a prayer by the sons, Roman and Tristan, ages three and five, everyone dug into the big bird, ham, dressing, potatoes, gravy and veggies. It was much later before anyone could eat the desserts of pumpkin and pecan pie.

While the football fans watched their game, my daughter Karen and I danced around the kitchen table with Tristan and Roman to ranchera music on the radio. So it was no wonder that I dropped into a peaceful sleep that night.

December was overwhelmingly busy, with luncheons and dinners sponsored by some of the organizations I work with throughout the year, which thankfully released me from cooking.

A couple of my favorite events early in the month were the poet's lunch at Park Hotel, where six of us gather regularly for monthly readings of our work, and an impromptu family dinner at a Chinese restaurant the same week after Tristan's participation in a program at St. Therese Catholic School. An arts and crafts show occupied one entire afternoon just talking with many of the interesting artists about their work.

I attended a sold-out New Mexichords concert at United Methodist Church with the Red Hat Ladies. The all-male chorus did a fantastic job, and we were pleased to tell them so when they greeted the crowd with tiny candy canes. They are very entertaining.

For a treat, I invited my daughter to the ice show at Santa Ana Star Center in Rio Rancho, never realizing that the place was so far from civilization. After driving miles and miles on a dark, cold night, we finally saw a flicker of light in the distance and followed the cars heading in that direction. The show, featuring Nancy Kerrigan, was absolutely beautiful, with the skaters' graceful moves on ice to the melodrama.

But it will be a long time before I go back to that stadium situated out on the lone prairie. I know the Scorpions hockey team plays there, but I think snakes and coyotes also inhabit the area.

Another enjoyable part of this season was the evening seven of us went caroling at Lovelace Women's Hospital. Most of us were nurses, but a doctor joined us and played her guitar as we sang our hearts out at several of the units. The look on a small child visitor's face to the song "Jingle Bells" was moving enough to give you tachycardia, as was the gratuitous singing of "Away in a Manger" on the maternity floor by patients and nurses. By the end of the tour, we had mastered the words to "Feliz Navidad" and all agreed that we had such a good time, we might repeat it next year.

I have celebrated Hanukkah in the past, but this year it was a Polish Christmas dinner at the home of my friends Bert and Debbie Duch on Christmas Eve. A special blessing with the sharing of wafer-thin bread preceded the fried fish, noodles with raisins, tiny carrots, sauerkraut and desserts. It was an extraordinary celebratory occasion.

Christmas Day brunch at my home with family was a potluck, with ham, eggs, posole, sopaipillas, tortillas and bizcochitos followed by gift exchanges.

When quiet time came, I contemplated that I had been truly blessed with faith, hope, love, family and good friends. I hope your holiday season was equally joyful.

ugustine, an Albuquerque resident, is a member of Laguna Pueblo, a retired nurse and a volunteer with the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center. Her column runs the third Thursday of each month.