When the winter season starts, Christmas is seen everywhere, but what about the other holidays being celebrated? While mostly centered around religion, winter holidays ring in the end of the year with family, friends and community.
Jenna Bennett (10) and her family celebrate Hanukkah, a religious holiday belonging to the Jewish faith. The name Hanukkah means dedication and honors the miracle of a lamp oil that was only supposed to last one day but lasted eight when the Maccabees rebelled to take back the Temple. The celebration of Hanukkah involves different hand-held activities and games played by both adults and children.
“There’s a game, it’s called dreidel, and it has Hebrew letters on it and you spin it, and everyone has a pot of beans, or candy called Gelt … and [depending on] what it lands on, you take from the pot, or you have to put yours in,” Bennett said.
Hanukkah is celebrated for eight days and eight nights. One of the central activities when celebrating is the lighting of the menorah, a candelabrum that holds nine candles. The menorah is lit for every night of Hanukkah.
“You don’t just light the candle. You’re supposed to light the middle one [then] you take that one and you light the other candles depending on the days with it, like one each night,” Bennett said.
According to Bennett, most festivities in Judaism occur in the evening or at night after sundown. These festivities are almost always spent with family, an important part for most people who celebrate.
“I like family because a lot of family comes in [to visit],” Bennett said. “I have a lot of family that’s Jewish. They live in different places and so they’ll come in and celebrate with us sometimes.
Bennett’s family doesn’t celebrate the traditional way; instead, she and her brother invite friends who do not share the same faith to participate in celebrations.
“We invite them to come see what we do, and then we get to share that with them,” Bennett said. “A lot of the time it’s not just the people that are Jewish celebrating it, we kind of see it as a way to kind of share the tradition of it to people who may not know about it.”
Though one may say that Hanukkah is a pretty well-known winter holiday, it does not get as much representation in the media as Christmas does.
“A lot of the time it’s Christmas, Christmas, Christmas, Christmas, and then it’s like ‘oh but there’s a menorah over there’ you know?” Bennett said.
Hanukkah does not have a set date when it is celebrated when the time comes around every year like other holidays. It is based on the Hebrew calendar, which follows lunar phases, opposed to the western calendar that follows the sun. A common misconception is that it is like Christmas for 8 days, but that is not the case.
“A lot of people when they find out ‘Oh, you’re Jewish,’ [they say] ‘Oh, you just get presents for eight days,’ but that’s not really what it’s about,” Bennett said.
Typically, when one hears the word Christmas, they would think about the Christmas tree, red and green, and Santa Claus, but one country does Christmas a little differently. Yeabesera Walle (10), whose family is Ethiopian, celebrates a type of Christmas from their country called Gena. The official date of the holiday is Jan. 7, but festivities start the night before on the sixth when those who celebrate go to church for liturgy and stay overnight.
“We sing songs and after that we eat, there’s certain foods we eat, it’s the break of a fast too,” Walle said.
Gena has the same background as regular Christian Christmas — the birth of Jesus Christ — but when celebrated within Ethiopian culture, it only maintains some of the same customs like opening presents.
“We don’t have a Christmas tree or anything,” Walle said. “Instead of us celebrating on the regular day, we open presents on Jan. 7.”
On the day of celebration, all-white clothing is worn by both men and women. Women wear a Habesha Kemis, a cultural dress, and a Sham, a head covering, while men wear regular all-white clothing.
“Girls wear these white cultural Ethiopian dresses and then we cover up our hair,” Walle said. “Guys just wear basic white pants and a shirt.”
Gena is celebrated on Jan. 7, instead of the normal Christmas Day, Dec. 25, due to the unique Ethiopian time system, which has a thirteenth-month calendar in which the current year is 2016. They are seven years behind due to their belief that Adam and Eve lived in the Garden of Eden for seven years before they were banished.
“We use a different calendar, I think the Egyptians also use it, and the Mayans used to use it,” Walle said
The day of Gena breaks a 40-day fast without meat and dairy products, meaning meat is the main course of most meals eaten that day.
“[There’s] this thing called injera and wett, which is kind of like a stew, and injera is the bread you pick it up and eat it with,” Walle said.
Ethiopian Christmas or Gena is not well known amongst people who do not celebrate the holiday, as it is also not shown much in everyday media in the winter.
“All we see is American Christmas, so it’d be really nice to see other Christmases and celebrations,” Walle said.
