No matter your background, where you come from or how old you are, the holidays are a magical time for many people.
They are days filled with family, friends, food and memories.
For a Denver woman, Dalia Dorta Gonzalez, the food and the memories go hand-in-hand. Every year she cooks up a classic Venezuelan dish that takes her back to her home country.
"You know when you have that bite of a meal that just reminds you what it used to be in your home with your parents, with your grandparents all of that,” Gonzalez said. “It's just a taste and it brings you back."
For Gonzalez, that meal is hallacas.
"I do this only once a year because of the work it takes,” she said. "So much cooking and so many different ingredients."
Hallacas are a traditional Venezuelan Christmas cuisine.
"As far as we know, the hallacas were invented by the slaves back in the colonial times,” Gonzalez said.
Gonzalez said the slaves would use whatever food leftovers they could find to make the hallacas, which are a mixture of meat stew, topped with vegetables, raisins, capers, almonds and bacon all stuffed into a corn dough. Then, it's neatly wrapped in banana leaves.
It's a lot of work to make but Gonzalez said it's worth it because it brings her back to Venezuela.
"This is a way to remember all of that and somehow remember the people you won't get to see again and all the activities you used to share,” she said. “It is important. Very important for us."
She said it’s also important to show people her home country through her eyes.
"It seems like nowadays, people what they know about Venezuela are the horrible things that are happening,” Gonzalez said. “The political turmoil. I think it's important for people to understand that Venezuelans are much more than the horrible things they're looking at now."
She believes hallacas can do that.
"I like to think, within this house this is a piece of Venezuela,” she said. “And whoever comes to this house, to show them the best of what we have."
A small holiday dish with a big message.
"It is our duty to let people know what an hallaca is."