Kaitlyn Thornton Abbott

In today’s society, we are surrounded by holiday cheer.  ABC Family hosts their “25 Days of Christmas” special, Christmas trees and lights go up, and once the peppermint mocha hits Starbucks, you know it’s Christmas time.  The holiday season, in my opinion, is the best time of year.  People seem to generally be in a more giving mood — after they move past Black Friday, that is.  But everyone seems to have a different idea of what exactly Christmas is or what it entails.  Every family has a different variation of traditions.  For example, in my family, we always go to the Christmas Eve service at my church and afterwards celebrate with my mother’s side of the family.  Christmas Day, we have our own little Christmas, and then go to dinner and celebrate with my dad’s side of the family.  But for us, as a nation, our traditions usually go hand-in-hand with our religion.  As previously stated, my family and I go to the Christmas Eve service our church offers.  But what are the origins of the holiday we’ve come to know as Christmas?

All around the world, Christians are celebrating the holiday surrounding Jesus’s birth.  Christianity celebrates Christmas on the foundation Christ was born of the virgin Mary.  Mary was living in Nazareth of Galilee and was engaged to be married to Joseph, a Jewish carpenter.  An angel visited her and explained to her she would conceive a son by the power of the Holy Spirit.  She would carry and give birth to this child, and she would name him Jesus.  At first Mary was afraid and troubled by the angel’s words.  Being a virgin, Mary questioned the angel, “How will this be?”  The angel explained the child would be God’s own Son and, therefore, “nothing is impossible with God.”  Humbled and in awe, Mary believed the angel of the Lord and rejoiced in God her Savior.  While Mary was still engaged to Joseph, she miraculously became pregnant through the Holy Spirit, as foretold to her by the angel.  When Mary told Joseph she was pregnant, he had every right to feel disgraced.  He knew the child was not his own, and Mary’s apparent unfaithfulness carried a grave social stigma.  Joseph not only had the right to divorce Mary; under Jewish law she could be put to death by stoning.  Although Joseph’s initial reaction was to break the engagement, the appropriate thing for a righteous man to do, he treated Mary with extreme kindness.  He did not want to cause her further shame, so he decided to act quietly.  But God sent an angel to Joseph in a dream to verify Mary’s story and reassure him his marriage to her was God’s will.  The angel explained the child within Mary was conceived by the Holy Spirit, His name would be Jesus, and He was the Messiah, God with us.  When Joseph woke from his dream, he willingly obeyed God and took Mary home to be his wife, in spite of the public humiliation he would face.  Perhaps this noble quality is one of the reasons God chose him to be the Messiah’s earthly father.  Joseph too must have wondered in awe as he remembered the words found in Isaiah 7:14, “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel” (NIV).  At that time, Caesar Augustus decreed a census be taken, and every person in the entire Roman world had to go to his own town to register.  Joseph, being of the line of David, was required to go to Bethlehem to register with Mary.  While in Bethlehem, Mary gave birth to Jesus.  Probably due to the census, the inn was too crowded, and Mary gave birth in a crude stable.  She wrapped the baby in cloths and placed him in a manger.

Hanukkah is a Jewish holiday celebrated for eight days and nights.  It starts on the 25th of the Jewish month of Kislev, which coincides with late November-early December on the Gregorian calendar.

In Hebrew, the word “Hanukkah” means “dedication.”  The name reminds us this holiday commemorates the re-dedication of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem following the Jewish victory over the Syrian-Greeks in 165 B.C.  In 168 B.C. the Jewish Temple was seized by Syrian-Greek soldiers and dedicated to the worship of the god Zeus.  This upset the Jewish people, but many were afraid to fight back for fear of reprisals.  Then in 167 B.C. the Syrian-Greek emperor Antiochus made the observance of Judaism an offense punishable by death.  He also ordered all Jews to worship Greek gods.

Jewish resistance began in the village of Modi’in, near Jerusalem.  Greek soldiers forcibly gathered the Jewish villages and told them to bow down to an idol and then ate the flesh of a pig — both practices forbidden to Jews.  A Greek officer ordered Mattathias, a High Priest, to obey their demands, but Mattathias refused.  When another villager stepped forward and offered to cooperate on Mattathias’ behalf, the High Priest became outraged.  He drew his sword and killed the villager, then turned on the Greek officer and killed him, too.  His five sons and the other villagers then attacked the remaining soldiers, killing all of them.  Mattathias and his family went into hiding in the mountains, where other Jews wishing to fight against the Greeks joined them.  Eventually they succeeded in retaking their land from the Greeks.  These rebels became known as the Maccabees, or Hasmoneans.

Once the Maccabees had regained control, they returned to the Temple in Jerusalem.  By this time it had been spiritually defiled by being used for the worship of foreign gods and also by practices such as sacrificing swine.  Jewish troops were determined to purify the Temple by burning ritual oil in the Temple’s menorah for eight days.  But to their dismay, they discovered there was only one day’s worth of oil left in the Temple.  They lit the menorah anyway and to their surprise the small amount of oil lasted the full eight days.  This is the miracle of the Hanukkah oil celebrated every year when Jews light a special menorah known as a Hanukkiyah for eight days.  One candle is lit on the first night of Hanukkah, two on the second, and so on, until eight candles are lit.

Kwanzaa, a less celebrated holiday but nonetheless renown, is another major holiday celebrated around Christmas time.  The name “Kwanzaa” is derived from the phrase matunda ya kwanza, which means “first fruits” in Swahili.  Each family celebrates Kwanzaa in its own way, but celebrations often include songs and dances, African drums, storytelling, poetry reading, and a large traditional meal.  On each of the seven nights, the family gathers and a child lights one of the candles on the Kinara (candleholder), then one of the seven principles is discussed.  The principles, called the Nguzo Saba (“seven principles” in Swahili), are values of African culture that contribute to building and reinforcing community among African-Americans created by Dr. Maulana Karenga.  Kwanzaa also has seven basic symbols that represent values and concepts reflective of African culture.  An African feast, called a Karamu, is held on December 31.

The candle-lighting ceremony each evening provides the opportunity to gather and discuss the meaning of Kwanzaa.  The first night, the black candle in the center is lit, and the principle of umoja/unity is discussed.  Day 1: Unity/Umoja: to strive for and maintain unity in the family, community, nation, and race.  Day 2: Self-determination/Kujichagulia: to define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves, and speak for ourselves.  Day 3: Collective Work and Responsibility/Ujima: to build and maintain our community together and make our brothers’ and sisters’ problems our problems and to solve them together.  Day 4: Cooperative Economics/Ujamaa: to build and maintain our own stores, shops, and other businesses and to profit from them together.  Day 5: Purpose/Nia: to make our collective vocation the building and developing of our community in order to restore our people to their traditional greatness.  Day 6: Creativity/Kuumba: to do always as much as we can, in the way we can, in order to leave our community more beautiful and beneficial than we inherited it.  Day 7: Faith/Imani: to believe with all our heart in our people, our parents, our teachers, our leaders, and the righteousness and victory of our struggle.

Many other traditions unique to a certain area in the world exist, but these three are the biggest players.  Other traditions we see in America find their roots throughout other cultures, though.  For example, Ireland, like most countries, has a number of Christmas traditions all its own.  Many of these customs have their root in the time when the Gaelic culture and religion of the country were being suppressed, and it is perhaps because of that they have survived into modern times.  The candle in the window is a prime example of this: the placing of a lighted candle in the window of a house on Christmas Eve is still practiced today.  It has a number of purposes, but primarily it was a symbol of welcome to Mary and Joseph as they travelled looking for shelter.  The candle also indicated a safe place for priests to perform mass; during Penal Times this was not allowed.  A further element of the tradition is the candle should be lit by the youngest member of the household and only be extinguished by a girl bearing the name “Mary.”

Christmas is a glorious holiday celebrated all around the world, although not necessarily under that name.  Christmas itself is not as much a holiday as it is a state of heart and mind.