Thanksgiving family tradition

Every year for Thanksgiving me, my mom, and my aunts make tamales with my grandma the night before. She doesn't have a special recipe since we buy the dough called masa from a store. My grandma makes her special salsa though, which she says her mother taught her to make, a lot of people really like it. My grandma makes a chocolate like dish called mole with chicken to put in the tamales. She learned to make tamales with her mom when she lived in Mexico. My grandma usually always puts mole with chicken, beans and cheese, or cheese and chile in the tamales, but since I learned that I could add my own ingredients in the tamales I've been experimenting every year and my grandma calls it "American tamales." Two years ago I made tamales with pesto, spinach, and feta. This year I'm going to try to make chicken garlic afredo tamales. All my uncles laugh at my creations and say I must not be Mexican if I don't like them the way they are, but I just enjoy experimenting. We also always make tamales before Christmas, which makes it twice a year that we make tamales.