Greetings! Merry post-Christmas, pre-New Year! Here’s a bonus episode of Planet Noun to end the year!

It’s an interview I found so interesting and relevant to the holidays, I couldn’t wait! I adore learning new things, and this was definitely newly-interesting!

Question: What are some of your favorite holiday traditions?

When my siblings and I were younger, my parents would always pack a brown paper lunch sack with natural treats…. an apple…an orange… unshelled walnuts, pecans and almonds. One of my parents even snapped a photo of me dancing around our green shag-carpeted living room holding one of those bags on Christmas Day in 19-something-ty something.

That’s an example of a received gift. But what about family traditions surrounding gift-giving to others? What about traditions involving family members who are far away—separated not only by land, but oceans?

Well, I learned something new in this interview with Illinois based photographer and artist Jason Reblando. He wrote a piece for CityLab about special boxes that members of the Filipino diaspora send home each year for Christmas. They’re called balikbayan boxes.

That was Illinois-based photographer and artist Jason Reblando. Find more about what he learned about balikbayan boxes in this piece he wrote for CityLab.