I know you are thinking why is my house learning about Hanukkah and Kwanzaa and what the heck is Christmastide? Well, it's us learning to celebrate other cultures. And Christmastide is a continuation of our Christmas!
Hanukkah for the Christian family? Yes! No, we are not an interfaith family. But, we do want to broaden the children's minds and lives. Plus, I love learning about it myself. We even decorated for Hanukkah in our den! We have a Hanukkah bush, which we love because it does remind us of our Christmas tree except it's only blue and white lights with a Star of David up top! And we are doing Hanukkah gifts each night. Nothing big but it's fun to do! (It even goes inside Christmastide!) We haven't kept strong to the kosher menu, but that's okay for us. We have had some of the more traditional dishes though! We haven't made our way to a synagogue yet, but we do plan to in the future to visit! So yes, we do have a menorah in our house and we do not regret it one bit!
Now, what in the world are we doing learning about Kwanzaa? This one is thanks to a family friend! We visited them this year for Christmas and my kids thought they were celebrating Hanukkah. I had to explain that they are different. My friend who is very sociable and hilarious was willing to sit down with them and explain. He suggested after learning about it to have our own mishumaa saba candles to help our kids understand more about this cultural celebration that isn't religious! I always thought it was a separate faith celebration. It's not at all! I like the kids learning about others!
Now, we are heavily celebrating Christmastide. What is it? It's the real twelve days of Christmas! It goes until Epiphany or as some call it Kings Day! In colonial times it was called the celebration of the twelfth night.
We are planning on having a huge celebration on January 6th to celebrate! I'll talk more about that in a separate post, for now, I want to talk about what we are planning on doing leading up to that day! We read about different saints and kept up with the Christmas festivities. We keep learning new ways to celebrate these days leading up to Epiphany! Do you have any suggestions for us?
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