Shhh, I have a secret confession: (I’m not really Team Pumpkin Spice.) Frankly, I’m more of a Salted Caramel Fangirl—though every time I ask for something of that flavor palette, I’m reminded of how passé it is.
“Aw, my mom loves that, too,” young baristas gush at me now.
I try to take it as the compliment that (I think) it’s meant to be.
Whatever your tastes, the U.S. holiday season is officially served. And for this Gen X mom, raising two Gen Alpha sons in a world that seems upside-down from the one that raised me, I’m forever searching for meaning in the things that we do … especially those we call tradition.
Parents from every generation know the barrage of questions that accompany specific ages in their children. From the 32,000 back-to-back, “Why?”-asks of our preschoolers to the only-slightly-more-nuanced, “But why do I have to?” eye-roll-accompanied shrugs of our tween-agers (and the shoulder-shrugged silences that translate, “Whatever,” into “But why, tho?” of our actual teens), it’s hard to explain to the younger generation why we trade gifts, hand out candy or bake gluten-free, ovo-lacto, naturally sweetened alternatives for the traditional if we aren’t really sure why, ourselves (allergies excluded).
What’s out this year: Saying yes to every invitation. Bypassing candy limits. Guilt. And every other socially seasonal stereotype that expired with the ‘90s.
What’s in: Making your own choices—from staying home on Christmas morning to let your children open gifts at a decidedly un-voracious pace (even if it upsets the in-laws); to scrapping gifts altogether to hand out awards for Best Uncle of the Year among the extended fam; to leaning into that dark Halloween décor theme you love (even if the neighbors don’t love it); to leaving the tree up through February to celebrate your own invented Hyggelit Season. (Raising my hand for that one!)
The holidays are not meant to be about stress. In the spirit of their original essence, here are 10 holidays around the world that families can use to celebrate the seasons with intention—whatever your flavor.
Thanksgiving – It’s easy to equate this one with gratitude, since that’s the entire meat of the holiday. Problematic provenance stories aside, the spirit of Thanksgiving is about bringing cultures together to share traditions—and honoring the symbiotic relationship of human striving with nature’s unpredictability. And since we can’t actually put aside those baked-in problems inherent in “The First Thanksgiving,” we can honor with intention the cultural complexities of our contemporary world as a new opportunity to re-vision the sharing that sits at the base of the holiday, such as supporting Indigenous food sovereignty.
The Montessori preschool where my children got their earliest education hosted a Friendsgiving that featured dosa from India, tamales from Mexico and pierogis from Poland right alongside the traditional turkey and stuffing and cranberries. Families brought their cultural favorites in flare of friendship put into practice. Similarly, the Gratitude Tree that my sister-in-law once gifted me as an interactive centerpiece—along with a box of other kid activities—helped us bring our thankfulness into action with our extended family. The Thanksgiving holiday is great compost for the emotionally intelligent concepts of not just gratitude, but also connection, support and repair.
You don’t have to live solely in North America to honor Thanksgiving rituals: Japan’s Labor Thanksgiving Day, celebrated in late November and rooted in early harvest festivals, is marked by formally thanking company employees and public workers, such as through homemade cards from schoolkids.
Diwali – The Festival of Lights is a traditional Hindu celebration—but is universally celebrated, as well, by some Buddhists, Sikhs, Jains and more. (I personally went with a group of Christian friends this year to BAPS Shri Mandir in the Chicago area to receive beautiful blessings and witness the impressive offering towers of fruits, flowers, chocolates and so much more in grateful honor of the human hope of good overcoming bad.) In addition to illuminating hope and peace in the world, there can also include practical aspects: ritual cleaning (to symbolically and literally purify); adornment (to invite and experience beauty); creating mandala sand art (to make mindfulness and also represent impermanence).
Lunar New Year – While the American concept of New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day focuses on the stark delineation of linear time—a stroke of the clock at midnight is celebrated with pomp, circumstance, noisy glee and champagne-toasted revelry—the eastern version continues to focus on a more cyclical concept of life. Marked by the lunar calendar versus the solar calendar dates, the Lunar New Year happens across Asian countries, parts of the Middle East and India, and even West Africa in or near springtime, a sort of mise en place of freshness and new beginnings. And the cycles don’t end there: Ancestral wisdom is revered through altars, gravesite visits and the gifting of food offerings. Records show these traditions, dating back to the 450s BCE, were pre-dated by similar autumnal harvest festivals. Both versions are rooted in giving thanks for abundance and continuing the cycle of prosperity. For instance, gifting small tokens of money from elders to children signifies not just good luck, but also a warding off of evil, or ill will.
Day of the Dead – When I think about honoring ancestors, I think first of Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead—a time to not just acknowledge but to fully celebrate the completion of the life cycle and reconnect with ancestors in every form. Appearing in calendars on or after American Halloween, this holiday is specifically Mexican, though it may have originated through Aztec or other native traditions.
Face-painting, colorful costumes, upbeat music and parades all mark the festivities of the day along with sharing stories and remembrances of late relatives, and even cooking family recipes and telling familial ancestral tales. Home offerings (ofrendas) are also made on ancestral altars, especially including marigolds, a symbol of the link between life and death. Although my children’s heritage is South American, not Central American (through my husband’s side), we have savored the opportunity to honor our lost loved ones by adding their pictures and mementos to our entryway table in a sort of ceremonial altar of our own, annually. Reverence, devotion, honor, forgiveness—and, yes, gratitude—are just some of the emotions activated at this holiday right alongside mourning and grief, as well as the joy of having loved.
Midsummer – My children have also richly inherited Nordic ancestry, since my dearly departed mother-in-law was half-Swedish and half-Danish, with grandparents who immigrated from both countries. While our family has adopted some of the winter traditions outlined below, Midsummer (Midsommar in Swedish) highlights the longest day of the year, also known as Summer Solstice. Dating as far back as the Stone Age, the celebrations include bonfires, music and dancing, courtship games and, of course, dining on delicious foods. (Interesting note: The original bonfires used “clean bones” in lieu of wood, hence the origin of the term.) The flip side of the life cycle, this holiday is all about everything that grows and flourishes, from nature to human nature.
Saint Lucia Day – Another Nordic tradition, also known as St. Lucy’s Day, this is one of the winter holidays that’s also celebrated in parts of Europe and by Swedish-Americans. Another “festival of lights,” it is marked with myriad candles: on trees, in windows, and most especially upon wreaths that sit atop an eldest daughter’s head—as she leads a parade of other young women in chorus through church aisles, streets that wend the town center or simply through the rooms of her family home. The history of the holiday blends hope (represented by the light in the darkness of winter) and charity (the young women act out the recorded acts of Saint Lucia, known for wearing a wreath of candles to light her way as she bestowed her foregone dowry gifts on hiding Christians during the Great Persecution of the 4th Century). With her early martyr status, Saint Lucia/St. Lucy also honors loss with reverence.
Christmas – It’s the largest-celebrated holiday around the world, now recognized on every continent. And whether or not we embrace how it got to those continents, the fact is that more than two billion people are now estimated to celebrate it in over 160 countries—with at least some level of intention. As a distinctly Christian holiday, its traditions also derive from pre-Christian traditions, like the banquets the Romans threw during Saturnalia when upper class members gave gifts to their servants or like the Norse Yule when the traditional yule log was burned in bonfires and home hearths. Many families still mark the season with small rituals of their own, like creating and hanging custom keepsake ornaments, and even businesses do so as well by handing out custom metal or glass ornaments as Christmas gifts. These customized ornaments capture a particular year’s hopes right alongside the heirlooms handed down through generations. These global customs are now baked into many versions of the holiday the world over—though some customs are truly unique: In Australia, the late-December/Orthodox-early-
Hanukkah – Never-ending light that represents hope in darkness and eternal resilience: That’s the heart of the Hanukkah story. This Jewish tradition happens over eight nights in December as a sacred retelling of the revolt of the Maccabean Jews against The Seleucid Greek empire. The lamps that burned to highlight their victory miraculously lasted for eight days, despite there being only enough oil to last overnight. Hope and faith are the hallmarks. And the story has served as not just an oral tradition of ancestral experience, but as an ongoing signifier of sacred blessings when prejudice rears its ugly head again. Good triumphs over bad intentions in yet another “festival of lights.”
Kwanzaa – Like the menorah of Hanukkah, a holy candelabra is the centerpiece of the African-American holiday Kwanzaa, also representative of hope and once-buried tradition, resurrected through the resilience of a people. Based on African harvest festivals, this winter holiday runs from December 26 to January 1 and was created intentionally as an activist rebuke to the hundreds of years of ethnic oppression and human rights violations born from The Transatlantic Slave Trade. Seven sacred principles are honored, one for each day of Kwanzaa. They are: unity, self-determination, collective work/collective responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity and faith.
Eid – The Islamic holiday shifts in the calendar with each celebration to rotate through every season, eventually. Linked to the lunar calendar and other Muslim holy days, some Eid celebrations mark the end to the fasting of Ramadan with celebratory feasts; all versions focus on friendship and acts of zakat, or charity.
Recently, I interviewed the author of children’s picture book The Gift of Eid, Shifa Saltagi Safadi—also author of the kid lit chapter book series Amina Banana and the middle grade book Kareem Between, written in verse and winning a 2024 National Book Award. Shifa sweetly re-envisions the classic tale by O. Henry, “The Gift of the Magi,” through the contemporary lens of mother-daughter bonding. And just as poetically, her book also illustrates the sweetness of this special holiday as the pair visit the famous Umayyad Majid mosque and the Souq al-Hamidiyeh market in Damascus. As the smell of bread wafts symbolically about the pages, the story ends with the characters doing nothing less than counting their blessings.
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock
