‘Tis the season...
Winter months play host to plethora of holidays
Photo courtesy of Anne Schumacher
November 17, 2006
By Calli McCain
News Editor
Wintertime, especially the month of December, is a period filled with holidays and traditions from all over the world from different social and religious groups. With 96 percent of Americans celebrating Christmas (according to a Fox News poll), it makes sense that this Christian holiday is the most prominently displayed in the country.
Kari Roels, Zeeland sophomore, says that this is her favorite part of the year.
"I love Christmas because you can decorate and everyone is cheery," Roels said. "And I love giving presents."
However, Christmas isn’t the only holiday this season.
Around the time that many are carving their Christmas hams and patiently awaiting Santa’s arrival, others are eating a breakfast of rice and milk, lighting the candles on their menorahs or kinaras, or airing their grievances.
Many holidays take place during these winter months, each with their own significance to those who celebrate them.
Winter Solstice may be the oldest winter holiday known to man, and celebrations can be traced back to numerous different ancient cultures, according to www.candlegrove.com.
Generally speaking, the solstice celebrates the day the earth and sun are the closest to each other and the lengthening of daylight hours after the solstice. This year’s solstice will occur on Dec. 22. Rituals and traditions for this holiday vary from culture to culture and have also changed over time, according to the web site.
Though www.candlegrove.com says that the Winter Solstice is mostly an ancient tradition, pagan religions, like Wicca, still celebrate the solstice, calling it Yule, when the "dark half of the year relinquishes to the light half," according to www.wicca.com.
Brooke Rickettson, Chesterland, Ohio senior, is not Wiccan, but has studied the religion and its celebrations.
"I have a lot of respect for the earth-based religions," Rickettson said.
Rickettson discussed the importance of the holiday among earth-based religions.
"A lot of it is association with the end of winter, the beginning of spring," she said. "It’s the longest night, but once you’re through there, the sun will rise and it will get progressively lighter and spring will come."
Many Christmas traditions are based off of ancient Winter Solstice celebrations, so activities for the holiday, such as caroling, decorating or "wassailing" trees, giving gifts, and kissing under the mistletoe are familiar to even those who don’t celebrate the holiday, according to www.wicca.com.
Another winter holiday less familiar to the majority of Americans is the Buddhist Bodhi Day. Usually celebrated on Dec. 8, this holiday celebrates the day the Buddha achieved enlightenment and thus, the birth of Buddhism, according to www.religioustolerance.org.
Antonio Guadarrama/www.pics4learning.com
Before achieving enlightenment through meditation, the Buddha, then known as the prince Siddhartha Gautama, attempted to discover the reason for human suffering through more drastic measures, such as extreme fasting. When he realized the answer would not be found through these methods, he was fed rice and milk to help him regain strength to continue his search. Today, those celebrating Bodhi Day may begin their day with a breakfast of rice and milk to commemorate this event, according to www.familydharma.pulelehuadesign.com.
With the American Jewish population at just over five million in 2005, according to www.judaism.about.com. Christmas’s closest rival, as far as holiday recognition, goes is probably Hanukkah.
According to Josh Rontal, Ann Arbor sophomore, fried foods are eaten to remember and celebrate the reason for the holiday: The miraculous burning of a little bit of oil for eight days after a Greek invasion of Israel and successful rebellion by the Jews, according to Rontal.
Other popular Hanukkah traditions include playing dreidel and lighting the candles on the menorah (a candelabra), one for each of the eight days of the celebration.
Rontal’s family chooses to forgo one of the more recent additions to the list of Hanukkah traditions: the giving of gifts.
"The holiday was not originally a gift-giving holiday," Rontal said. "Jews only began giving large gifts after the popularity of Christmas made Jewish kids feel bad. For this reason, my family doesn’t."
Not all December holidays are necessarily religious. For example, the African-American/Pan-African holiday, Kwanzaa, was created in 1966 by Maulana Korenga, a professor at California State University, to celebrate family, community, and culture.
Keshia Williams, Country Club Hills, Ill. sophomore, and her family celebrate Kwanzaa as well as Christmas.
"I found out about [Kwanzaa] from my English teacher in fourth grade," Williams said. "She gave me a book to read, and I fell in love with the purpose of the holiday."
Kwanzaa is celebrated from Dec. 26 through Jan. 1. Each of the seven days represents one of the Seven Principles, also known as Nguzo Saba: unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity, and faith, according to www.officialkwanzaawebsite.org.
Similar to Hanukkah, a tradition of Kwanzaa is to light one candle, on a kinara as opposed to a menorah, for each night of the week-long celebration, Williams said.
"Sometimes we give small gifts to represent the days," Williams said. "But my family celebrates Christmas as well, so they are typically inexpensive."
For those looking for a winter holiday with a little less pomp and circumstance, an episode of "Seinfeld" provided a solution.
Festivus, now infamous among "Seinfeld" fans, can be traced back to ancient Rome, nineteenth-century California and upstate New York in the 1960s, according to www.festivusbook.com. The site points out that "Seinfeld" writers were not actually the originators of the holiday.
Shaun Bonnell, Otsego junior and avid "Seinfeld" fan, points out the difference between Festivus and most other winter holidays.
"Festivus is a holiday in which you can take out all of your frustrations," Bonnell said. "It gives you a chance to tell your loved ones how you really feel and if anything they have been doing has upset you."
Celebrated on Dec. 23, the holiday has three major traditions associated with it. One tradition is minimal decorations, the only one being a tall aluminum pole. The pole can be any size as long as it’s "an unadorned length of lusterless metal or something that looks like metal," according to www.festivusbook.com. Festivus poles are available for purchase online at www.festivuspoles.com
Jared Boynton, Traverse City senior, began celebrating Festivus in high school after a friend brought the idea to his choir class.
"My pole is platinum though," Boynton joked. "Not aluminum like most."
Those celebrating Festivus will also partake in the "Airing of Grievances," where family and friends tell each other how they were a disappointment to each other throughout the previous year, according to www.festivusbook.com.
Finally, the head of the household chooses one other person to participate in the "Feats of Strength," which can vary, but the celebration is not considered over until the head of the family has been pinned to the ground, www.seinfeld-fan.net says.
So just remember, when celebrating the "holiday season" or
when wishing someone "happy holidays," there is much more behind those
statements than many people recognize.
FRIDAY NOV. 17