Sacred Heart Academy is home to a diverse community of students who come from many different backgrounds. This diversity is especially evident in the variety of ways students celebrate holidays and festivals. Since the Christmas season is upon us, I decided to ask various students how they celebrate in an attempt to reveal SHA’s diversity so that it may be fully recognized and appreciated.

One major part of celebrating Christmas is those you celebrate with. All of the students interviewed showed that no matter how they celebrate Christmas, the time spent celebrating was with family. Sometimes the family they celebrate with includes just parents and siblings, other times it includes aunts, uncles, grandparents, and cousins, and for some, it extends to even more distant family members.

Where you celebrate Christmas is also very important. The student body was split fairly evenly into three categories: students who travel to other relatives’ homes, students who celebrate in their own home, and students who spend part of Christmas at home and the other part traveling. Those who do travel typically stay within the Northeast region of the U.S.

Christmas is a holiday that, as many of us know, involves  significant preparation. Depending on the student, preparation might just be putting up a tree and shopping for presents at the last minute, or it might be spending a month or more to decorate the house, bake cookies, cook the holiday meals, decorate the perfect tree, and shop for gifts. One interesting way of preparing for Christmas was hosting a party where the whole family gathers to make and eat tamales. Other families dedicated themselves to baking; some families bake up to sixteen different types of cookies and others create several kinds of truffles to share with others. Many families find decorating for Christmas to be their main focus and spend a considerable amount of time setting up a Christmas village, covering the house with colorful lights, draping garlands and wreaths all around, and placing poinsettias in vases. Through my conversations with others, I discovered that one decoration which varies greatly from family to family is the Christmas tree. Most of the students say they get a real tree that they and their family pick out and cut down together; decorating the tree is an entirely different matter, however. Some SHA girls will shop with their families each year to buy new ornaments, and others will have collections of ornaments that they combine to decorate the tree. Jill Bauknecht, a freshman, describes her Christmas tree as, “getting fuller and more chaotic with each year, but chaos is good,” since her family has the tradition of adding new ornaments to their pre-existing ornament collection each year; this ensures that the tree reflects their past and current interests and milestones.

This holiday calls for a generous amount of beverages and foods, which often reflect on one’s cultural background. Some families enjoy foods and drinks such as hot chocolate, eggnog, candy canes, Christmas cookies, gingerbread, and truffles. Others enjoy drinks such as sorrel, which is a Grenadian drink that is the product of boiled dried flowers of a sorrel plant, spices, and sugars. Another student, Zoe Lamoreaux, explained that her family will eat Lutefisk, a type of Norwegian fish; they do this every year even though she describes it as “disgusting.” Despite her distaste for this meal, Zoe admits that it is a tradition. Another popular food enjoyed by several SHA families is eggnog pie; in fact, one family even holds contests to see which family member can bake the best eggnog pie.

Yet another factor that contributes to Christmas is the presents, specifically how they are bought, made, and given. Many SHA students said that they take advantage of Black Friday sales to buy Christmas presents early at a good price whereas others wait until later to buy gifts. On the rarer occasion, some spend a whole day with their family making Christmas gifts. Most families place their carefully wrapped gifts to exchange under the Christmas trees, and some others take more creative approaches to give presents by playing Secret Santa or Chinese grab-bags. Chinese grab-bags a game where all players will take turns picking wrapped packages, each package containing a gift, and upon unwrapping the gift, the player may either choose to keep their present or trade with the person who took their turn right before.

When students were asked about their favorite part of Christmas, many agreed that their favorite part is being able to spend time with their family, which brings us full circle to the fact that no matter how you celebrate Christmas, or any holiday for that matter, family is most important. Sacred Heart may be home to much diversity, but it is clear that SHA girls have a special place in their hearts for family, especially around the holidays.