Non-Traditional Holidays During December

By: Emily Silva and Jadyn Fowler

During the month of December the main, holidays that many people think of and celebrate is Christmas Eve, Christmas, and New Years Eve. But there are many other holidays in the month of December, some of these holidays as Hanukkah, Winter Solstice, and Kwanzaa. These are some holidays that aren’t as popular during the month of December, the main holiday celebrated is Christmas during this month.

Hanukkah is a Jewish holiday that celebrates the victory of the Maccabees over a larger Syrian army, Jewish people celebrate Hanukkah for eight days. It begins on December 25th of Kislev as stated by to the Hebrew calendar. Sometimes Hanukkah may occur in late November to late December. During each of the eight nights there is on candle lit for each day, there is a ninth candle called Shammash that is the center of all the other candles. Each night each candle will be lit by the Shammash candle until all eight candles are lit all together on the last night. Other festivities that they done is playing the game dreidel and eating oil-based foods, such as latkes, sufganiyot and dairy foods.

Winter Solstice happens twice a year, once in the Northern and Southern hemisphere and it’s the shortest period of daylight but it is also the longest night period. It’s an old solstice tradition that has influenced the holidays we celebrate now, such as Christmas and Hanukkah. The Winter Solstice happens in the winter (hint the name). It occurs when the Earth’s pole has its maximum tilt away from the Sun. Traditionally, in many temperate regions the winter solstice it’s seen as the middle of winter but today in some countries and calendars it’s seen at the beginning of winter.

St. Lucia Day is a Christian feast day observed on December 13th. Many girls in Sweden will dress up in long white gowns with red sashes, also known as “Lucia brides”. They will also wear burning candles on their heads, they’ll wake up their families by singing songs, bring them some coffee, and twisted saffron buns called, “Lucia cats”. They wear these candles around their head because her name means light. In Sweden, this is on of their biggest celebrations, it comes from a young girl named St. Lucia, she was a young Christian girl who was martyred, killed for her faith in 304, she was killed by Romans during the Diocletian Persecution.