Holidays at FHC Series

 I celebrate Christmas connected to Catholicism. Each year, my family on my mom's side plays White Elephant. It's just a game where everyone wraps a gift—it’s usually a pretty funny gift; It could be inappropriate or have an innuendo in it, and it's not supposed to be that good or anything. So, you just put [a gift] in the middle, and everyone gets a number, and then, you all basically end up ...

I do a lot in order to celebrate Christmas, but I think most things are pretty common. The day before Christmas Eve I usually go to my mom's parents’ house in Grand Haven. We spend the night, and on Christmas Eve, we have a big dinner and open stockings and gifts. My grandma on this side of the family gives us stockings which I think is unique. In reality, it is just a huge gift bag filled with tra...

My family starts our celebration of the holidays over Thanksgiving. Every year, we visit my grandparents in Baltimore and meet up with the rest of my dad's side of the family. My dad's side of my family is of Jewish Heritage, so we do a celebration of Hanukkah when we're all together for Thanksgiving. We play dreidel, eat gelt, and exchange gifts on Thanksgiving after our Thanksgiving dinner. At ...

Amid the often-frozen, chilled months of winter, comes the warmth of the holidays, which welcomes bliss into the lives of the many families who celebrate during this time. The core of winter often brings people together as families and friends gather to commemorate themselves and what they believe, regardless of the specific traditions occurring inside homes.  As the ice freezes on families...

At this time of year, there are all different types of holidays being celebrated, even holidays that some people don’t even know are occurring. Within FHC,  there are miscellaneous holidays that students, as well as staff, are celebrating. Among these celebrators is Media Communications and FX teacher Jeff Manders. “I celebrate the holiday Festivus at this time of year,” Manders said. “It is n...

Commercialized Christmas has never been a big deal in my house. For my family, Christmas wasn’t Santa and reindeer, it was Jesus and the wise men.  We had Christmas traditions just like every other family, but the traditions themselves were just a little different. Instead of leaving cookies out for Santa, we went to our church's annual Christmas service. Instead of blow-up snowmen decoratin...

When the calendar flips to December, labels already fill the dates. Boxing day, Hanukkah, Three Kings Day, Kwanzaa, Christmas. Each holiday has its own day full of celebrations and cultivated culture--ones full of laughs and love. These celebrations focus on a variety of things: family, religion, giving back, and more. Yet we often only hear of Christmas, the main focus of mass media. We hear of ...

[My family] celebrates Christmas; my celebrations are based on my personal Christian beliefs and my cultural beliefs, so it’s a combination of the two. Where I come from, Christmas is not so much a commercial thing, but more [about] coming together as a family and celebrating the fact that Christ came as a child to show us how to live—that's culturally-wise. Now, based on my personal Christian ...

I grew up an atheist, so I didn’t really celebrate Christmas as a kid. Instead, we celebrate Winter Solstice. We do a lot of the same things people do on Christmas: open presents under the tree and whatnot. I think my parents had us celebrate on the Winter Solstice so that we wouldn’t miss out on what other kids got to experience.  Winter Solstice is on the 21st of December; I always thought it ...