DECEMBER!
By Maereg and Vivian
December is an action packed month in terms of holidays. There are many holidays that take place in December, but some of the most well known holidays are Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, and Christmas.
Kwanzaa
Kwanzaa is a very widely celebrated holiday, but not many people know about the importance of the celebration. Kwanzaa celebrates African-American culture and style, and takes place December 26 – January 1. Maulana Karenga is the founder of the holiday, and he founded it in 1966.
Karenga founded Kwanzaa to celebrate what he called ‘the seven principles of Kwanzaa’. They are:
Umoja (Unity): To strive for and to maintain unity in the family, community, nation, and race.
Kujichagulia (Self-Determination): To define and name ourselves, as well as to create and speak for ourselves.
Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility): To build and maintain our community together and make our brothers’ and sisters’ problems our problems and to solve them together.
Ujamaa (Cooperative economics): To build and maintain our own stores, shops, and other businesses and to profit from them together.
Nia (Purpose): To make our collective vocation the building and developing of our community in order to restore our people to their traditional greatness.
Kuumba (Creativity): 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.
Imani (Faith): To believe with all our hearts in our people, our parents, our teachers, our leaders, and the righteousness and victory of our struggle.
To all celebrating, We wish you a wonderful celebration!
Hanukkah
Hanukkah is celebrated for eight days and eight nights, starting between late November, through late December. The holiday is observed by lighting candles on a menorah. Each night, one another candle is lit until all the candles are lit on the eighth day. The candle in the middle of the menorah is the candle used for lighting the other candles. It’s called a shamash, meaning ‘helper’ or ‘servant’. Other traditions celebrated during Hanukkah include playing the game dreidel, and eating oil based foods latkes or sufganiyot, or other dairy foods.
When you read this, Hanukkah would have just ended. If you did celebrate- we hope you enjoyed your time!
Christmas
Christmas is probably one of the most well known holidays. Christmas Eve is December 24th, while Christmas Day is on December 25th. Christmas celebrates the birthday of Jesus, which took place that same day a LOOONNNGG time ago. Some traditions that take place for Christmas include putting up a Christmas tree, lighting advent candles, receiving gifts from Santa and relatives and friends, and many other fun activities.
On Christmas Eve, kids hang stockings on their fireplaces and leave cookies out for Santa. The next morning, Christmas Day, they wake up to find gifts in their stockings and under the tree, and the cookies eaten.
All these holidays are so much fun, but how will covid affect them this year? We’ll have to wait and see!
6th grade reporters, Maereg and Vivian signing off!
Great Job! This was awesome <3