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The story of the Icelandic tradition of giving books to people on Christmas Eve.

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How Jólabókaflóðið became The retail cycle each year, from the launch of new books to the reading of these books at Christmas, is known as Jólabókaflóðið, which translates roughly into English as &…

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How Jólabókaflóði ð became

The retail cycle each year, from the launch of new books to the reading of these books at Christmas, is known as Jólabókaflóðið, which translates roughly into English as ‘the Christmas book flood’.

This tradition began during World War II once Iceland had gained its independence for Denmark in 1944. Paper was one of the few commodities not rationed during the war, so Icelanders shared their love of books even more as other types of gifts were short supply. This increase in giving books as presents reinforced Iceland’s culture as a nation of bookaholics – a study conducted by Bifröst University in 2013 found that half the country’s population read at least eight books a year.

Every year since 1944, the Icelandic book trade has published a catalogue – called Bókatíðindi (‘Book Bulletin’, in English) – that is sent to every household in the country in mid-November during the Reykjavik Book Fair. People use the catalogue to order books to give friends and family for Christmas.

During the festive season, gifts are opened on 24 December and, by tradition, everyone reads the books they have been given straight away, often while drinking hot chocolate or alcohol-free Christmas ale called jólabland.

How Jolabokaflod CIC became

In October 2015, Christopher Norris – a senior executive-level media, publishing and social entrepreneur – was invited by BookMachine to write a regular blog posting for members of this international publishing community to read, having written a well-received piece about the future of publishing: ‘Publishing 2020: an Advent calendar of change‘. As he researched topics to write about, he read an in-depth review in The Bookseller about the book trade in Iceland, ‘In depth: Iceland’s book market‘, and came across Jólabókaflóðið for the first time.

As Christopher was a pioneer of World Book Day in the UK, serving on the steering committee for the inaugural event in 1996-7, he realised that the Icelandic tradition of Jólabókaflóðið offered a fabulous opportunity to promote book buying and reading within the same initiative, so the seeds of Jolabokaflod CIC were planted.

Urged on by the BookMachine team, Christopher launched the UK-version of Jolabokaflod at an RSA Bounce event in London for entrepreneurs in November 2015.

In December 2015, on a business trip to New York, Christopher met with Hlynur Guðjónsson, Consul General and Trade Commissioner at the Consulate General of Iceland in New York, to share the vision of spreading the custom and practice of Jólabókaflóðið to the UK and beyond. Mr Guðjónsson gave Christopher’s Jolabokaflod plans his endorsement and facilitated contact with Icelandic organisations of potential mutual interest, including embassies and book trade bodies such as the Reykjavik UNESCO City of Literature and the Icelandic Literature Center, both players in annual ‘Christmas book flood’.

At Christmas 2015, Christopher encouraged people all over the world to experience Jólabókaflóðið, the joy of giving books as gifts and reading them over the festive period, in a series of published articles and blog postings.

Between March and October 2016, the Jolabokaflod initiative launched its first crowdfunding project at CrowdPatch – called The Icelanders Cometh – which built on the strong connection with Icelandic literature by seeking funds for UK libraries to spend on books published in English by Icelandic authors. The project raised £2365.00, 103% of its target figure.

In November 2016, Christopher started a new Jolabokaflod-related crowdfunding project, to publish a UK version of the Book Bulletin that captures book recommendations and personal/professional profiles for sharing with people seeking to buy Christmas gifts for their friends and families. This project concluded successfully in February 2017, just after a Gala launch party held at the Hotel Café Royal. The Book Bulletin is now an annual campaign.

In spring 2017, Christopher established two companies to promote the ‘Christmas book flood’ tradition: Jolabokaflod CIC (a not-for-profit social enterprise); and Jolabokaflod Book Campaign Ltd (a commercial trading company).

Global interest in Jolabokaflod CIC at the London Book Fair in March 2017 sparked a year of visiting trade expos to spread the word around the world about the Christmas book flood tradition, notably to BookExpo America in May 2017 and the Frankfurt Book Fair in October 2017. International trade fairs continue to be vital to sharing the Jólabókaflóðið concept with the global book trade.

Jolabokaflod CIC and Jolabokaflod Book Campaign Ltd are on rapid growth curves, with interest expressed from people everywhere in the book trade and externally from the general public. Our founding story is far from complete.

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9 Cultural Winter Celebrations from Around the World

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You’re sure to know about Christmas, but perhaps there are a few on this list of celebrations from around the world that are new to you.

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Beautiful Music for Hanukkah - Hanukkah ★781

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Best of 1950s to 1970s Christmas Carols ~ vintage christmas songs that will melt your heart 🎅🎄⛄❄️

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December Solstice | But Why Adventures! Northeast Nature | PBS LearningMedia

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The winter solstice is the shortest day of the year in terms of sunlight…but why? Spend the solstice with us at an earth clock in Burlington Vermont, learning about how people across time and culture have marked the changing of the seasons. Host Jane Lindholm also pays a visit to a planetarium and learns about the astronomical significance of the solstice with meteorologist Mark Breen. Though you might suspect the coldest darkest time of year is when the northern hemisphere is farthest from the sun, that’s not the case! We’ll discover why it’s so cold and dark when we’re closer to the sun.

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The myths and mysteries of this well-know figure!

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The name comes from a time during Queen Victoria's reign when the rich used to box up gifts to give to the poor.

Boxing Day was traditionally a day off for servants - a day when they received a special Christmas box from their masters.

The servants would also go home on Boxing Day to give Christmas boxes to their families.

The 26 December also has religious connections and is celebrated as Saint Stephen's Day in Ireland and the Catalonia region of Spain.

In some European countries - such as Hungary, Germany, Poland and the Netherlands - Boxing Day is celebrated as a second Christmas Day.

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Ever wondered how Boxing Day got its name? Find out everything you need to know about the day after Christmas.

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St. Lucia’s Day | History, Traditions, & Facts

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St. Lucia’s Day, festival of lights celebrated in Sweden, Norway, and the Swedish-speaking areas of Finland on December 13 in honor of St. Lucia. One of the earliest Christian martyrs, St. Lucia was killed by the Romans in 304 CE because of her religious beliefs.

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9 Cultural Winter Celebrations from Around the World

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You’re sure to know about Christmas, but perhaps there are a few on this list of celebrations from around the world that are new to you.

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The holidays behind the holiday season - Pathfinder

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As the U.S. transitions into the colder months, with a chill in the air and frost lining fields of grass, many Americans find the holiday season upon them again. Commercials advertise multitudes of gifts, families prepare to gather and many step into kitchens to produce traditional meals. Living in a multicultural nation means that Americans…

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The Birth of Jesus, Luke 1-2 - Luke-Acts Series

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See how Jesus' birth into humble conditions and a family with low social status foreshadows the upside-down nature of Jesus' Kingdom.

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Braving the December cold in Chicago every year, thousands of people walk miles in a pilgrimage to pay homage to Our Lady of Guadalupe, a Mexican icon of Catholicism who is celebrated on Dec. 12 at a shrine in Des Plaines.

Some walk barefoot, and others carry heavy statues of La Morenita, as they call the beloved representation of Jesus' mother. There's also a race, a group of people who bike, hundreds of equestrians and a procession of semitrucks.

Ricardo Alanis and his wife, Guadalupe Alanis, said it was a miracle Our Lady of Guadalupe granted them that solidified their faith and in 2000 led them to organize a pilgrimage from Chicago to the shrine, 1170 N. River Road in Des Plaines, after they migrated from Michoacan, Mexico.

"She saved my wife's and my youngest daughter's lives," Ricardo Alanis said.

While living in Michoacan, Guadalupe Alanis said she was told to abort their younger daughter because it was a high-risk pregnancy. However, the couple refused and instead prayed.

Their daughter, Maria Guadalupe Alanis, named after the Virgin Mary, is now 33, and she has made the pilgrimage by foot with her father several times.

Pilgrimages like the one the Alanis family organizes show the devotion people have to Our Lady of Guadalupe, Sanchez said.

"That extreme expression of sacrifice reveals the extreme need that they feel and the strong devotion that our people have," said Sanchez, who has seen the number of pilgrims and processions for the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe grow each year since he became rector in 2016.

Our Lady of Guadalupe, he said, represents power and access to God to Catholics all over the world.

"She is no longer just a Mexican icon," he said.

She is known as the Mother of the Americas and in 1999, Pope John Paul II reaffirmed her role as the patroness of the Americas and added her feast to the Catholic calendar throughout the Americas.

"It's impossible to describe the level of faith and sentiment that the pilgrims feel as they walk to the shrine, and even harder to express the feeling of hope, happiness and gratitude that is felt when they arrive at the shrine amid music and thousands of flowers," Sanchez said.

Many more participate but don't register and don't follow set pilgrimage routes. Over the years, the feast has become ubiquitous in the Archdiocese of Chicago, and there are now hundreds of special Masses with "Las Mañanitas" - a song to commemorate her first apparition - at midnight or 5 a.m. in churches throughout the metro area, said Alejandro Castillo, a spokesman for the archdiocese.

This year, organizers expect the same, though it all depends on the weather, Sanchez said.

"There was a year where almost 400,000 people visited the shrine" for the Dec. 12 feast, he said.

The numbers demonstrate the significant population of Latinos and, specifically, the presence of those who can't travel to her shrine in Mexico because of their immigration status, health or economic problems, Sanchez said.

"The shrine here and the ability to make these pilgrimages (in the streets of Chicago) as they did in their hometowns in Mexico represents hope and makes them feel closer to her," Castillo said.

It is estimated that 50% of the Catholics in the Chicago Archdiocese are Latinos, and more than a third of the parishes have "some (type of) Hispanic ministry," Castillo said.

The basilica houses the original cloak on which it is believed that the image of the Virgin Mary appeared before peasant Juan Diego in December 1531 on that same hill where her shrine now stands. Before it was brought to the Chicago area, the Des Plaines icon was touched to the original image and blessed at the basilica by the church's then-rector.

Aside from the homages paid on Dec. 12, there are hundreds of pilgrimages and processions and more than a million visitors from all over the United States throughout the year, Sanchez said. It is the most visited shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in the United States, although there are other churches that also house officially sanctioned images from the basilica.

"For many people, it may all seem like superstition and foreign, but we're talking about people who are comfortable with the promise of Christianity, and the biggest icon of that is Our Lady of Guadalupe," he said.

Hundreds bring her roses - like the ones on Juan Diego's tilma - and many more give her bouquets of assorted flowers. Amid candles, there are also milagros - items that the devotees take her and leave in the shrine or nearby "as a reminder of that which they're praying for," Sanchez said.

A few years after putting down roots in Chicago, Ricardo Alanis felt the need to honor Our Lady of Guadalupe on her day "because I have countless blessings and miracles to thank her" for, he said.

There was no local procession in his area, so on a December night in 1999, he asked his brother and one of his cousins to walk with him from Our Lady of Lourdes Church, 4640 N. Ashland Ave., to Des Plaines to estimate the amount of time it would take to get there.

The following year, he led the first-ever pilgrimage from Chicago to the shrine in Des Plaines. It was roughly 60 people, Alanis recalled. The procession now has more than 1,000 attendees, making it the largest and longest-running pilgrimage to Des Plaines on Dec. 12, said Ignacio Perez, spokesman for the shrine. Every year, on Dec. 11, devotees gather in front of Our Lady of Lourdes Church around 7:30 p.m. to begin the pilgrimage by foot at 10 p.m., arriving in Des Plaines at roughly 5 a.m.

Instilled with great faith by his mother's example, Alanis first took the pilgrimage to the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe from his hometown in Michoacan to Mexico City in his early 20s. He then made the five-day pilgrimage every year for almost 20 years, he recalled.

"Many people have lost faith or don't know of faith until they experience a pilgrimage or the celebration on Dec. 12 in her shrine," said Guadalupe Alanis. "Our goal is to ensure that people don't stop believing in Our Lady of Guadalupe, in Jesus and God. Miracles happen."

Their prayers, they believe, also cured Guadalupe Alanis of lymphoma in 2011 and allowed Ricardo to continue walking and organizing the pilgrimage despite having his knees replaced a few years ago. The couple have also witnessed hundreds of people fulfilling their pledges to the Virgin Mary through the pilgrimage they organize and have heard thousands of testimonies of faith, they said.

Despite the growth in the number of attendees, Alanis said that he has never acquired any sort of permits from the city of Chicago. Instead, he has sought donations from pilgrims to rent portable bathrooms and the trailer to carry them, and to make sure there is enough money to pay a banda to sing a few songs for La Morenita, he said.

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Most years, there are enough donations to cover the cost of it all, almost $2,000. Other times, he pays the expenses himself.

Sanchez said that it is testimonies like the Alanises' that keep the faith and the tradition of the processions and pilgrimages alive and growing in the Chicago area.

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Chicago-area Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, 2nd only to Mexico City, grows as faithful aim to honor Mary for what they see as answered prayers

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Braving the December cold in Chicago every year, thousands of people walk miles in a pilgrimage of faith to pay homage to Our Lady of Guadalupe, a Mexican icon of Catholicism that is celebrated on Dec. 12 at a shrine in Des Plaines.

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Though you'll hear some cheer-filled, Taylor Momsen (pre- Gossip Girl)-esque holiday devotees singing about how Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year, no one takes that message as seriously as Bruce Forbes.

Forbes loves Christmas so much, he wrote a book about it, "Christmas, a Candid History." The Morningside College religious studies professor has spent years studying the origins of Christmas, from the emerald evergreen to Jesus to the Starbucks cup-fueled "War on Christmas."

Forbes helped us put together an abbreviated timeline of everything you never wanted to know about Christmas.
CBC: Christmas Before Christ
Many folks associate Christmas with the birth of Christ, but Forbes has a historic bomb to drop on those people: The idea of Christmas predates Christianity. The origins of the celebration really started with mid-winter festivals around the time of the Winter Solstice. People in ancient nations were cold, Forbes said. They needed a reason to celebrate. So they did.

Christianity first started with the Roman Empire, but the earliest Christians didn't even celebrate Jesus's birth for almost 300 years. If you've heard of C&E (Christmas and Easter) Christians, for the first hundred years, these people would have just been 'E' Christians, because they only celebrated Easter. Forbes notes that biblical scholars overwhelmingly say there's no proof Jesus was born on December 25, and he believes Christians simply decided to celebrate Jesus's birth when they were already celebrating.

"They put it right in the middle of what were already existing mid-winter festivals," Forbes tells Teen Vogue. "It helps me understand why there's so much argument today about Christmas. It's two things, not one. It's a midwinter festival and it's a Christian celebration about the meaning of Jesus's birth, but they're fused together... From the moment Christmas started being celebrated by Christians, it was already a fusion of a mid-winter party and a celebration with Christian meaning."
How Christmas Has Changed
Forbes says Christmas has changed a lot over the years, picking up different traditions from different cultures as it spread to new nations. For example, the evergreen tree comes from Germany, the fire-red Poinsettia from Mexico. Traditions were passed from culture to culture as the holiday touched different corners of the world.

"Christmas is like a snowball - one that you roll on the ground to make a snowman, not the kind you throw - and if you roll a snowball, you pick up snow and leaves and a mitten somebody dropped," Forbes says. "When Christianity moves out of the Mediterranean area through Europe, every place it comes, they have this winter celebration of the birth of Jesus, they meet some winter party that culture already has going on, so they pick that up and spread it to another country."
First comes Jesus, then comes Capitalism
As it turns out, we have Capitalism to thank for more than just Black Friday. Forbes says the industrialization of the 1800s first kicked off the modern consumerism we know to be a part of Christmas.

"If you look up the first Christmas cards, the first Christmas trees for sale, or the first electric lights, or the first wrapping paper - this commercialization all got going in the mid-to-late 1800s and really kicks off in the 1900s."

As we transformed from Norman Rockwell holiday cards of yore to the colorful Starbucks cups filled to the brim with peppermint lattes of modern times, Christmas has been commercialized over the years, partially thanks to Santa Claus.

"When your central symbol of Christmas becomes a jolly gift-giver, that helps commercialize things," Forbes says.
The Deal With Santa
Some say Coca-Cola invented Santa, but the idea was born from Saint Nicholas, who was a saint and bishop who was generous and gave things to children in the 300s.

Then we got "Saint Nick," from Clement Clarke Moore's 1823 poem, "The Night Before Christmas," in which Santa was seen as a miniature "jolly old elf," who had "tiny reindeer."

Forbes describes him in this era as a "scrawny leprechaun."

Cartoonist Thomas Nast later sketched a Santa similar to the one we know today for Harper's Weekly, according to The History Channel. Then came Coca Cola, who made commercials that highly publicized Santa, Forbes says.

"There's an evolution of Santa Claus," Forbes said. "This very interesting morphing from this saint and bishop to a gift-giver."

Cheers to Santa, Starbucks, and Saint Nick.

Related: 13 Holiday Cookie Recipes

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Though you'll hear some cheer-filled, Taylor Momsen (pre- Gossip Girl)-esque holiday devotees singing about how Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year, no one takes that message as seriously as Bruce Forbes. Forbes loves Christmas so much, he wrote a book about it, "Christmas, a Candid History."

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Hanukkah, the Jewish Festival of Lights, begins this Saturday at sundown.

First thing's first: Hanukkah isn't the "Jewish Christmas." Christmas is one of the most important holidays in Christianity - a commemoration of the birth of Jesus, who Christians believe was God.

By comparison, Hanukkah is much less important in Judaism. But because it's close to Christmas on the calendar, it's become a way for Jews in the U.S. - especially children - to participate in a holiday season set by the dominant Christian culture, according to Maytal Saltiel, associate university chaplain at Yale University.

"It is a minor Jewish holiday. It's definitely not one of the big ones," Saltiel explains. "But because of its temporal calendar location, it definitely gets given a lot of importance in American society."

So what is Hanukkah all about? Here's a rundown.
When
Hanukkah lasts for eight days and nights, from the 24th day of the month of Kislev to the 1st day of the month of Tevet on the Jewish religious calendar. On the calendar most of us are used to, called the Gregorian calendar, Hanukkah usually falls late November or December.
What
Some religious holidays are somber, but Hanukkah (sometimes spelled "Chanukah") is festive. It celebrates a time about 2,200 years ago when a small army of Jewish rebels called the Maccabees overthrew a Greek-Syrian occupation of Israel.

Hanukkah means "dedication." After the Maccabees overthrew Greek ruler, they re-dedicated the Jewish temple in Jerusalem, which they believed the Greeks had desecrated.

A special oil lamp with seven branches, called the menorah, burned in the temple every night. When the Maccabees re-dedicated the temple, they could only find enough pure oil for one night. However, according to Jewish tradition, that one day's worth of oil miraculously lasted for eight nights, until the Maccabees could make more oil for the menorah.

This story can have a lot of meaning for our lives today, according to Saltiel, whether or not we're Jewish. "What does it mean to purify yourself, purify the temple?" she asks. "How do we declare our own values and purify who we are and what we want to stand for?"
How
Jews celebrate Hanukkah by saying special prayers and lighting a nine-branched oil lamp or candle stick, also called a menorah.

One of the menorah's flames sits higher than the others. It's called the shamash, or "attendant." First, a person lights the shamash then uses it to light the other flames - one on the first night of Hanukkah, two on the second, and so on until all the lights are lit on the final night. The menorah is suppose to be in a window or doorway so others can see it - a way to publicize the miracle of the oil.

That oil's crept into Hanukkah foods, too, and Jews eat special foods cooked in oil on this holiday. Potato pancakes called latkes, usually topped with sour cream and apple sauce, and jelly-filled doughnuts are favorites.
Why
Hanukkah comes during the darkest, coldest part of the year - a time of year when many people struggle with depression, when the days are short and hope can seem scarce.

"[I]t's a good time to throw a party and eat really delicious, very bad for you foods, which we all need in the winter, to spread some joy," Saltiel says.

This year feels especially dark for many Jews in the U.S. The contentious presidential campaign saw a resurgence in white nationalism and anti-Semitism. President-elect Donald Trump has publicly disavowed hate, but many of his actions during the campaign seemed to feed into it. Since the election, there's been a spike in hate crimes across the country, and anti-Semitic white nationalists have been featured in the media.

The story of Hanukkah can help give people inspiration and hope in the face of that kind of hatred, according to Saltiel.

"I think at this point in the world, not to get political, but it's an important time for people to take inspiration from the story, from the light, from what it means to overcome evil," she says. "Wherever people want to get their inspiration from that, I'm all for."

Related: 13 Holiday Cookie Recipes

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Hanukkah, the Jewish Festival of Lights, begins this Saturday at sundown. First thing's first: Hanukkah isn't the "Jewish Christmas." Christmas is one of the most important holidays in Christianity - a commemoration of the birth of Jesus, who Christians believe was God. By comparison, Hanukkah is much less important in Judaism.

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Every year, as we count down to December 25th, we find ourselves immersed in Christmas cheer. Houses are lit up with decorations, Christmas movies take over our regularly scheduled TV programming, and Christmas carols gleefully ring out in every mall we frequent. It's become such a common part of Western civilization that we sometimes forget that not everyone celebrates Christmas at this time of year. While other celebrations, like the Jewish festival of Hanukkah, may be more widely known, there is still a lot to be learned about Kwanzaa.
What are the origins of Kwanzaa?
After the assassination of Malcolm X in 1965, Maulana Karenga and Hakim Jamal, Malcolm X's cousin, created a magazine called US which aimed to promote African-American culture. The magazine eventually grew into the US Organization that promoted the concept of black nationalism and unity.

Karenga and Jamal eventually parted ways over their ideological differences. Jamal believed the organization should hold Malcolm X's ideas as their central guiding focus, but Karenga insisted that African culture, including teaching Swahili and promoting African rituals, be the center of their ideology.

In 1966, Karenga's strong beliefs in propagating "Afroamerican culture" lead to him creating the Kwanzaa festival which was designed to be the first specifically African-American holiday in the nation.
Why is it called Kwanzaa?
Kwanzaa is derived from the Swahili phrase "matunda ya kwanza" which means "first fruits." Throughout African history, from ancient Egypt to Yorubaland, first-fruit celebrations have been a staple of many of the continent's different countries and cultures. Though each festival had their own unique differences, the main themes of commemorating the past, celebrating family and culture, showing reverence for a higher power, and recommitting oneself's to the future, were fairly constant throughout.

These are the themes that Karenga aimed to instill into his conceptualization and modern practice of Kwanzaa.
What are the some of rituals and traditions surrounding Kwanzaa?
Kwanzaa is celebrated from December 26th to January 1st. The first step, much like Christmas, is to decorate your home with symbols of Kwanzaa such as the Kwanzaa altar, African sculptures, crafts, candles, and flags. Each day, those who partake in the festivities, recognize one of the seven principles of Kwanzaa, or Nguzo Saba (the seven principles). It is common to greet one another with the Swahili phrase "Habari Gani" which translates to "what is the news?" When asked, one should reply with the corresponding principle of the day.

Day 1, December 26th, is Umoja (Unity) which commences the festival season by propagating unity in the family, community, nation, and race. The middle black candle in the Kinara, the seven-candle holder used throughout the celebration, is lit and the Umoja (Unity cup) is filled with fruit juice and passed around to family members.

Day 2, December 27th is Kujichagulia (Self-Determination) which requires the lighting of the far-left red candle in the Kinara. Whomever lights it should make a statement related to the principle before the Unity cup is shared once again.

Day 3, December 28th is Ujima (Collective Work & Responsibility) which represents a commitment to community building, requires that the far left green candle is lit. The principle is discussed and the Unity cap is shared by those in the congregating spot.

Day 4, December 29th is Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics) will see the second red candle lit before the principle is discussed and the Unity cup shared. This day represents a commitment to community building through local and national economic support.

Day 5, December 30th is Nia (Purpose) which propagates the restoration of cultural greatness through cooperative support, requires the second green candle to be lit. As with the other days, the principle is discussed and the Unity cup shared.

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Every year, as we count down to December 25th, we find ourselves immersed in Christmas cheer. Houses are lit up with decorations, Christmas movies take over our regularly scheduled TV programming, and Christmas carols gleefully ring out in every mall we frequent.

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Our Lady of Guadalupe | Description, History, & Facts

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Our Lady of Guadalupe, the Virgin Mary in her appearance before Saint Juan Diego in a vision in Mexico in 1531. The name also refers to the Marian apparition itself. Our Lady of Guadalupe holds a special place in the religious life of Mexico and is one of the most popular religious devotions.

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Christmas is celebrated annually on December 25 as both a religious observance of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth and a secular holiday. The holiday's religious significance is central to the season for many Christian Americans, but many non-devout Christians and even non-Christians now enjoy the more commercially inspired aspects of the holiday, such as gift-giving, decorating Christmas trees, sending seasonal cards, and displaying holly, mistletoe, candy canes, and Christmas stockings.

Many pre-Christian cultures celebrated the winter solstice as either a period of heightened significance or to commemorate an important deity. In tune with the seasons and cycles of nature, the pre-Christian Celts perceived the winter solstice as the period of rebirth between the bounty of harvest and the promise...

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Christmas is celebrated annually on December 25 as both a religious observance of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth and a secular holiday. The holiday's religious significance is central to the season for many Christian Americans, but many non-devout Christians and even non-Christians now enjoy the more commercially inspired aspects of the holiday, such as gift-giving, decorating Christmas trees, sending seasonal cards, and displaying holly, mistletoe, candy canes, and Christmas stockings.

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Hanukkah, also spelled "Chanukkah" and "Chanukah," is celebrated by Judaism's followers each year for eight nights, beginning on Kislev 25, the twenty-fifth day of the ninth month on the Hebrew lunar calendar. On the Gregorian calendar, the first day of Hanukkah can fall anywhere between November 28 and December 26.

Hanukkah commemorates the rededication of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, the miracle of a small amount of oil that miraculously kept the temple's eternal flame lit for eight days. It is also known as the "Festival of Lights."

In 168 bc, the Seleucids (a Syrian-Greek dynasty) seized the Holy Temple in Jerusalem from the Jews and rededicated it to Zeus. The Seleucids' leader, the king Antiochus, began attempting to Hellenize...

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Gale In Context: High School - Topic - Hanukkah

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Hanukkah, also spelled "Chanukkah" and "Chanukah," is celebrated by Judaism's followers each year for eight nights, beginning on Kislev 25, the twenty-fifth day of the ninth month on the Hebrew lunar calendar. On the Gregorian calendar, the first day of Hanukkah can fall anywhere between November 28 and December 26.

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Kwanzaa is celebrated each year from December 26 through January 1. The holiday celebrates African heritage and is observed primarily by people of African descent living in the United States and elsewhere. Kwanzaa is rooted in ancient traditions of seasonal festivals. Its reemergence as a celebration in the contemporary United States, however, is a relatively new and rapidly growing phenomenon.

Kwanzaa celebrates family, community, and culture. While not conceived as a religious holiday, it concerns basic values found in many African cultures. The name Kwanzaa is based on a Swahili term; its use reflects the pan-African nature of the holiday since Swahili is a widely spoken African language.

Kwanzaa gets it name from the Swahili term matunda ya kwanza, which...

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Gale In Context: High School - Topic - Kwanzaa

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Kwanzaa is celebrated each year from December 26 through January 1. The holiday celebrates African heritage and is observed primarily by people of African descent living in the United States and elsewhere. Kwanzaa is rooted in ancient traditions of seasonal festivals.