Tangyuan and the Enchanted Village

The other day was the Chinese celebration of the winter solstice, It is a big deal type of holiday with feasts and eating glutinous white balls and I know all of this because I saw it on facebook. I grew up celebrating Chinese New Year, which means my mother who is German, Irish, Polish, American would give me a red envelope and say Gung hei faht choi and that we would go to see the lion dancers and firecrackers in Chinatown. Basically I know about Chinese New Year because part of the celebration takes place on the street and is extremely loud so you can't miss it.
I didn't grow up with the other holidays but was exposed to them through the Kung Fu school, especially when I was living there with Sifu. I have exactly one clear memory of making TangYuan. I think it was like midnight and let's for the sake of the story , say that it was a weeknight and that I did have to go to work tomorrow, and Sifu is suddenly in action. "Here help me make this little white dough balls... now put them in boiling water it's fast. Wait.. yeah you probably don't know about these things."
I'm thinking, what the hell  is going on? What things. When we poured sugary water/syrup?  over the dough balls and ate them I thought they were awesome. It;s exactly the type of desert I like.
"You like these?" My Sifu says. "Huh."
It was never explained exactly why we did these cultural things. Chinese are not big on that. Now like Jewish people. Everyone knows what a menorah and a dradle and what Latkas are for because it's in schools and on television. But even people who are in a traditional Chinese Family might not know what the Lion Head is about and even in Chinese school we read about the various holidays  celebrated at home and talked about how "oh don't you do that at home?" but the only school holiday we learned songs for ironivcally was Christmas. We should work on that. And when I say me, I we I mean Chinese people. Preferably Chinese people other than me who know all the traditions in the first place.
So, I looked up the holiday in a book and it says you should go hiking and enjoy poetry because of some stroy assoicated with the holiday. We wnet to the Enchanted village and listened to one of the animatronic girls tell the night before Christmas. Check.
We have to eat those glutinous white balls.
I'm thinking of making these for Christmas dinner. The salty version doesn't match, but the sweet one does. In fact when I first ate them I thought how christmasy they tasted, looked and even felt. Golden sugary water over white snow like glutinous balls. Someone should cash in on this. Say it's an elf desert from the North pole and sell it on the street.
It also said that this holiday could be treated as a second Ching Ming or Memorial for ancestors day. Interestingly enough, though I didn not grow up doing this, Christmas is supposed to be a time for this too. I gather this from seeing Grave wreaths sold in stores and from watching a Christmas Carol and Downton Abbey.
So the Norse Germanic Pagan Traditions of Europe on the Winter Solstice and the Northern Han Pagan traditions of China on the winter solstice actually have some striking similarities. Interesting.
Anyone know how to make Tangyuan and want to tell me? I'm going to go buy that glutinous white powder, but what about the sugar part? Is it sugar water or syrup I can't remember. I'll look it up, I'll ask someone in the aisle, they'll yell at me that I missed the holiday and then stare in wonder at the white guy pronouncing Cantonese or Taishanese like a Cantonese or Taishanese. I'm starting a new Christmas desert tradition in my family though.