Tis the season for a variety of holiday celebrations and festivities from diverse cultures globally.
On December 13th the Ismaili Muslim Community Celebrated their spiritual leader Price Karim Aga Khan’s 88th birthday with years of leadership and service the global community. His development of the Aga Khan Developmental network has developed health institutions around the world as well and programs cultivating art and culture.
The night of December 17th, the Rumi Arus was celebrated around the world marking the death anniversary of the world renowned Sufi Poet who rivals Sheakpear. Rumi’s Arus is celebrated as a marriage ceremony of his union with his creator.
He was born in Vakhsh, a village in modern-day Tajikistan in 1207 AD and died in Konya in present day Turkey in 1273 AD. Ceremonies are usually celebrated in congratulations featuring Sema or whirling by dervishes as a form of devotion. However, this year ceremonies will be virtual all around the world.
Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu, Buddhist, sufi, or zen. Not any religion or cultural system. I am not from the East or the West, not out of the ocean or up from the ground, not natural or ethereal, not composed of elements at all. I do not exist, am not an entity in this world or the next, did not descend from Adam or Eve or any origin story. My place is placeless, a trace of the traceless. Neither body or soul. I belong to the beloved, have seen the two worlds as one and that one call to and know, first, last, outer, inner, only that breath breathing human being – Rumi
The winter solstice on December 21st, marking the shortest day and longest night, is a cosmological event is celebrated by different cultures around the world in a variety of ways, as we go from the dark, back into the light.
Physical remains in the layouts of late Neolithic and Bronze Age archaeological sites, such as Stonehenge in England and Newgrange in Ireland whose primary axes of both of these monuments seem to have been carefully aligned on a sightline pointing to the winter solstice sunrise at Newgrange and the winter solstice sunset at Stonehenge.
Yule or Yuletide (“Yule time” or “Yule season”) is a festival historically observed by the Germanic peoples. Scholars have connected the original celebrations of Yule to the Wild Hunt, the god Odin, and the pagan Anglo-Saxon Mōdraniht.
As Europe became Christianised, Yule underwent a Christening, resulting in the term Christmastide. Some present-day Christmas customs and traditions such as the Yule log, Yule goat, Yule boar, Yule singing, and others may have connections to older pagan Yule traditions. Terms with an etymological equivalent to Yule are still used in Nordic countries and Estonia to describe Christmas and other festivals occurring during the winter holiday season. However, Christmas is celebrated in a variety of different ways in different cultures.
As the world celebrates Christmas in the Christian majority countries, we don’t realize how Christian minorities, where they are not a majority, struggle, especially around Christmas.
Bethlehem where Jesus was born, is a city under siege under Israeli occupation of Palestine. Descendants of the first Christians cannot celebrate Christmas openly and Palestinian Christians cannot even visit Jesus’s birthplace. Palestinian Christian activist Hanna Kwas writes “My family, relatives, friends and the whole population of Bethlehem are enduring the most repressive and discriminatory regime the town has ever experienced and that includes the hated Roman (western) occupation of the city 2000 years ago.” He adds “A 25 ft. high concrete wall, in addition to the military check points, are putting the population of the city behind an iron curtain and rendering the city an open prison.
A Pakistani Muslim man in a 15 year relationship with a Pakistani Christian woman, faces discrimination from the local Muslim population. He says that “We can legally get married, but after we get married, extremists will start threatening.” Christians face a lot of religious discrimination in Muslim majority countries even though the Quran says to protect the “people of the book” which includes Christians and Jews. Christians have also faced discrimination in the Hindu majority in India and Buddist majorities in Sri Lanka and Mynmarr(Burma).
Indigenous, black and Christians of colour, also face racial discrimination in Christian majority places including North America, Europe and Austria. However, Chrisitan minorities around the world are very resilient and strong in their faith and have very unique customs and traditions, especially around Christmas.
In the Persian tradition, meaning “birth,” Yalda or Sheb-e-Yalda is marked by family gatherings, candles (originally, fires lit all night), poetry readings, and a feast to get through the longest night of the year. Nuts and fruits, including watermelon and pomegranates, are traditionally eaten legend has it that eating the fruits of summer will protect you from illness in winter.
In China, Dong Zhi is celebrated with family gatherings and a big meal, including rice balls called tang yuan. To mark the end of the harvest season, the holiday also has roots in the Chinese concept of yin and yang: After the solstice, the abundance of darkness in winter will begin to be balanced with the light of the sun. The winter solstice in Japan, called Toji, has a few interesting customs associated with it. Traditionally, a winter squash called kabocha is eaten, one of only a few crops that would have been available. A hot bath with yuzu citrus fruits is believed to refresh body and spirit, ward off illness, as well as soothe dry winter skin. And apparently, rodents called capybaras love yuzu baths as well—it’s become popular for Japanese zoos to throw the fruit into the warm waters the animals soak in on the winter solstice.
The indigenous Hopi people of present-day northern Arizona celebrate the winter solstice as part of their religious tradition of kachina (or katsina), which are spirits representing the natural world. In the Soyal solstice ceremony, led by a tribal chief, the sun is welcomed back to its summer path with ritual dances. Gift-giving to children, prayers for the coming year, singing, and storytelling are also part of the festivities. Prayer sticks and kachina dolls are often made in preparation for the celebration.
“Little new year” is marked in South Korea with the traditional eating of a red bean porridge called patjuk. Red is a lucky color, so the dish is meant to keep bad spirits away while embracing good wishes for the coming year.
Other Dongji traditions include giving calendars, as Korean kings used to do, and socks. And this is a day Koreans wish for snow: cold weather on the winter solstice is said to bring a bountiful harvest, but warm weather will not.
The eight-day Jewish celebration known as Hanukkah or Chanukah commemorates the Jewish resistance against their Greek Syrian oppressors in the second century B.C. Hanukkah, which means “dedication” in Hebrew, begins on the 25th of Kislev on the Hebrew calendar and usually falls in November or December. The year Hanukkah false on the evening of December 25th and ends on January 2nd. Often called the Festival of Lights, the holiday is celebrated with the lighting of the menorah, traditional foods, games and gifts. Jesus also is said to have celebrated Hanukkah.
Jewish religion and culture can be traced back to Semitic tribes that lived in the Middle East approximately 4,000 years ago.
The Babylonian exile in 586 B.C. marked the beginning of major dispersals of Jewish populations from the Middle East and the development of various Jewish communities outside of present-day Israel.
Today, Jews belong to several communities that can be classified according to the location where each community developed. Among others, these include the Middle Eastern communities of former Babylonia and Palestine, the Jewish communities of North Africa and the Mediterranean Basin, and Ashkenazi communities of central and eastern Europe.
The history of the Jewish Diaspora—the numerous migrations of Jewish populations and their subsequent residence in various countries in Europe, North Africa, and West Asia—has resulted in a complex set of genetic relationships among Jewish populations and their non-Jewish neighbors.
Maulana Karenga founded this unique African diasporan festival in 1966 to help people, living throughout the Americas, reconnect with their African cultural and historical heritage inspired by Umkhosi Woselwa, an annual Zulu festival. The word Kwanzaa comes from the swahili word anaza which means start.
Kuanza or kwanza means to start. So, Kwanzaa is a festival to start or welcome the new year which goes from December 26 to January 1st. An extra “a” was added to kwanza to reflect 7 days of Kwanzaa.
Kwanzaa is not a religious festival but it has spiritual roots with both Islamic and Christian origins reflected in the 7 principles of which are each celebrated on the 7 days of Kwanzaa as Africa has both Islamic and Christian influences.
- Umoja (Unity) December 26th: To strive for and to maintain unity in the family, community, nation, and race.
- Kujichagulia (Self-Determination) December 27th: To define and name ourselves, as well as to create and speak for ourselves. Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics): To build and maintain our own stores, shops, and other businesses and to profit from them together.
- Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility) December 28th: To build and maintain our community together and make our brothers’ and sisters’ problems our problems and to solve them together.
- Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics) December 29th: To build and maintain our own stores, shops, and other businesses and to profit from them together.
- Nia (Purpose) December 30th: To make our collective vocation the building and developing of our community in order to restore our people to their traditional greatness.
- Kuumba (Creativity) December 31st: 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) January 1st: To believe with all our hearts in our people, our parents, our teachers, our leaders, and the righteousness and victory of our struggle.
Kwanzaa is observed by using kinara, a Swahili word that means candle holder. Seven candles are placed in the kinara: three red (on the left), three green (on the right), and a single black candle that’s placed in the center.
The candles are called the Mishumaa, which means seven candles. Additional decor includes Mahini, which means corn and a kikombe cha umoja or a unity cup for commemorating and giving “shukrani,” which means thanks to African ancestors. These ceremonial items can be displayed on a kente cloth on a table or cabinet.