With the holidays approaching us, everyone is putting up their Christmas trees and hanging up their lights. With the overwhelming excitement of Christmas, we don’t think about what the winter holiday is like in other cultures.
Junior foreign exchange student Allende Bilbao-Yague, from Spain, first talked about the gift giver around Christmas and the celebration on Christmas Eve.
“We celebrate Christmas Eve having a family dinner. The 25th we open the presents that, in my case, Olentzero left for my family and me,” said Bilbao-Yague.
“Olentzero is a person that works with coal and the night of the 24th he goes house by house giving presents to people from the Basque Country, a province from Spain,” she added.
She then explained what her family does the days after Christmas Eve.
“The 25th we eat with the family. The 31st we have another family dinner and we talk, play games together, and turn the TV on to watch the last strokes for midnight. We eat 12 grapes, one per the last 12 strokes. The 1st of January we have another lunch with the family. The night of the 5th we put one shoe under the tree before bed because the Three Wise Men come to leave presents,” she said.
She also eats the “Roscón de Reyes”, a sweet round, cake or oval shape Mexican bread, decorated with slices of crystallized or candied fruit colors.
“The 6th we have breakfast together and eat the traditional “Roscón de Reyes”. After that, we open the presents and Christmas comes to an end.”
She also shared some of the foods she eats with family around this time.
“I usually celebrate dinners with my dad's family and lunches with my mom’s. We eat seafood, foie gras, Serrano ham, cheese. For dessert we eat nougat and bonbons,” she said.
She then talked about the religious parts of her Christmas including the “Misa del Gallo” or Rooster Mass, a name for the Catholic Mass celebrated around midnight of Christmas Eve and sometimes in the days immediately preceding Christmas.
“Religion is associated to my Christmas as I come from a Christiane family. The 24th, before having dinner, I go to church to the “Misa del Gallo”, also called Rooster’s Mass,” she said.
The decorations at her Christmas are similar to ours.
“The decorations, as far as I’ve seen for the moment, are similar to the ones you have here. We put up and decorate the tree and the nativity scene. In Spain, most of the people live in flats and everything is more urbanized, so we don’t have houses decorated with lights, but we do decorate our streets,” she said.
Lastly, she shared her favorite parts of Christmas.
“My favorite part of Christmas is being with my family and spending time with them, and the food,” she said.
A senior foreign exchange student, Ulyana Okhrymovych, from Ukraine, told about her traditions.
She explained how she celebrates Christmas a little later than us and the gifts don’t play much of a part in it.
“We usually celebrate Christmas on the 7th of January. We don’t have a gift exchange. It’s just a family dinner where we make 12 dishes,” she said.
She then talked about the traditional foods she eats like Varenyky, which are boiled dumplings stuffed with potato, cheese, or other filling and Deruny, a potato pancake made with finely grated potatoes, onions, eggs, flour, and sour cream.
“We make our traditional ''Varenyky”, ”Deruny” and so on. We usually go to church on Christmas Day and a few days after Christmas we go and sing Christmas songs for our neighbors,” she said.
She also said her Christmas is “all about Christianity” and there’s “no presents, just love.”
Okhrymovych also celebrates other winter holidays including St. Nicklaus Day, where they believe that St. Nicklaus comes to their homes at night and brings us presents and puts them under their beds. She also celebrates Old New Year, a day to mark the changing of the year according to the old Julian calendar, and Vodochresche, is a day when people go to any rivers or ponds and take a bath there.
“We have St. Nicklaus Day, New Year, Christmas, Old New Year, Vodochresche.” she said.
