From parrandas to Three Kings Day, Southern Delaware welcomes Puerto Rican holiday culture

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The holidays look different across communities, but for Puerto Rican Neyda Albarrán, founder and director of The Culture Club PR, music is the thread that holds the season together. It’s a rhythm rooted in memory from family kitchens to nights that stretch long with laughter as friends go door-to-door singing. This season, her organization is bringing those sounds and flavors to southern Delaware.

“During the holiday season, we’ve received requests to share some of the traditions that we do celebrate in Puerto Rico,” she said.

In response, The Culture Club PR is launching a series of December and early January events that invite families into the island’s Christmas spirit – from musical parrandas to a Three Kings Day celebration.

It started Dec. 6 at the Dover Library, where Albarrán read holiday stories and led crafts for children. The goal is to introduce young families to the traditions that shape Puerto Rican Christmas and prepare them for January’s Fiesta de Reyes celebration.

“We want to promote a culture of peace through multicultural learning, experience and celebration,” she said. “The celebrations of countries teach us a lot about the people and the history of those countries.”

One of those celebrations is the parranda, Puerto Rico’s energetic twist on caroling — a tradition where the family being serenaded often joins the group and follows them to the next home.

“A parranda is the Puerto Rican version of Christmas caroling on steroids because it is not a silent night,” she laughed. “It is actually a kind of a surprise visit to friends with loud, happy, fun music, and you sing outside of their home until they wake up, invite you in and give you something to eat.”

The songs themselves carry history. Albarrán shared one verse: “alegre vengo de la montaña,” meaning “I am happily coming from the mountain to sing to my friends.” In Puerto Rico, many families — especially those living in the mountains — would literally travel down together, singing from home to home.

Puerto Rican music is also having a surge, Albarrán said, with traditional rhythms gaining attention alongside global stars. As artists like Bad Bunny elevate plena and bomba on major stages, she sees new opportunities to reintroduce these sounds to children who may have grown up far from the island.

“These are rhythms that we normally sing, and it’s not just during Christmas, but there’s a whole generation of kids that have either been raised or born here stateside that have not been exposed to these rhythms, these songs,” she noted.

To nurture that connection, The Culture Club PR is hosting a parranda on Dec. 12 at their Milford location. While it won’t include the full house-to-house walk of a traditional parranda, families will learn the music, instruments and customs so they can take part next year.

The celebrations continue Dec. 13 with Splash Around the Town Christmas at Splash Laundromat in Georgetown, where children can dive into crafts, story time and fun with community leaders — all part of the club’s mission to make cultural learning accessible.

“I would love people to get in touch with their roots, with their identity, and celebrate our uniqueness. Whatever culture we’re focusing on, whether it’s Puerto Rican, whether it’s Icelandic, whether it is Brazilian, whatever culture we’re focusing on, I want kids to be open and appreciative of what makes us different and the things that make us the same.”

All events lead toward the organization’s biggest celebration: the Fiesta de Reyes on Jan. 4 in Milford — a Three Kings Day tradition that, for many across Latin America and the Caribbean, represents the original Christmas story.