Happy holidays from Monterey Language Services! Time flies, we have found ourselves in the holiday season again! This year we would like to shine a light on holidays that take place in December. Let us know in the comments about any others you know about.

Christmas

A major holiday in the US and the world is Christmas, where Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ by giving gifts to friends and family members. It is a great time to remember what to be thankful for, repaying gifts, and giving kindness to others. Being such a significant holiday, December is often filled with Christmas imagery like trees, sparkling ornaments, and songs that fill malls, supermarkets, and radio stations.

Hanukah

Also written as Hannukah or Chanukah, this holiday celebrates the famous story about how, during a days-long fight against Syrian Greeks, candles continued to burn for eight nights rather than just one as was expected. Subsequently, Jerusalem was recovered by the Jewish, and the Second Temple was rededicated to the Jewish people. The significance of the holiday symbolizing resistance and religious freedom cannot be overstated.

Hanukah is observed by lighting the candles. On each of the holiday’s eight nights, one additional candle is lit by the ninth candle, called shamash (“helper” or “attendant”), until all eight candles are lit together on the final night of the celebration. Hanukah has attained major cultural significance in North America and elsewhere, due to often occurring around the same time as Christmas.

Kwanzaa

Like Hannukah, imagery around Kwanzaa also includes candles, one of which is black, three are red, and three are green. The black one, which represents the African people, is used to light the others; red represents the struggle that Blacks have gone through, and the green represents hope and future.

Kwanzaa is actually a newer holiday that began in 1966, created by Dr. Maulana Karenga after the Watts riots in Los Angeles. The holiday celebrates Black heritage and lasts for seven days, with each day highlighting a different principle: Unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity, and faith.

Las Posadas

Spanish for “The Inns,” Las Posadas is a Christmas-adjacent holiday that is celebrated in Mexico and some other parts of Central and South America such as Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecuador. The holiday takes place between the 16^th and 24^th, and acts as a reenactment of Mary and Joseph’s journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem, searching for safe lodgings for Mary to give birth to Jesus. The holiday highlights the importance of faith, prayer, and pilgrimages.

The nine days interval for this holiday represents Mary’s nine-month pregnancy. Each night, a child dressed as an angel leads others through the community, where they stop and ask for lodging. When they are refused lodging, those in the procession sing Christmas carols. At the end of every night, after the group is accepted into one of the homes or a church, mass is held, and children break a pinata that is usually shaped like a star—the one that led the wise men to Jesus’s birthplace.

Multi-Cultural Celebration

December is a wonderful month of the year; people from all over the world are taking multi-cultural celebration of holidays. The holidays bond us together as a family, a community, a nation, and even a whole world. Throughout the holidays, we can feel a sense of belonging and reflect on what is important to us. At Monterey Language Services, we will continue doing what we believe in—that is, to help community communication through translation and interpretation. We are thankful for having you to make our work meaningful and enjoyable. Happy holidays from the Monterey Language Services team, we send you our warmest wishes for a wonderful holiday season!