(Blog#3 by Pierre Yaldo)
Today, while on my way to poli sci class, I stopped by the "holiday diversity" display. It is located on the left side of the walkway between the arts building and Kellogg Library. On the grass along the walkway are 10 or so signs, each displaying different customs of different religions, and holidays that they celebrate around this time of year. Here are what they looked like:
Normally, when this time of year comes around, people just think about christmas, how could you not? there are christmas lights everywhere, people out buying christmas trees and stuff. What about all the other holidays? while touring this display, i read about holidays that i had never even heard of, which is surprising since some of them are important holidays to millions of people.
The holidays I read about were: Christmas (duh), Hannukkanukanauka, "Eid- Al- Adha", Bodhi day, Boxing day...?, Las Posadas, Kwanzaa, Hogmanay, and Junkanoo (as seen above). I had time to read all of the holiday cards (since i ended up skipping my poli sci class as i am now in the library writing this blog). Some of them are pretty interesting. For example, "boxing day" is a holiday celebrated the day after Christmas, in the UK and other commonwealth countries, where employers and bosses give presents to their workers/employers. It is actually an observed holiday in the UK, Hong Kong, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. Another interesting one was christmas, where white christians people celebrate the fabled story of a jew who supposedly died and came back to life by putting up evergreen trees (stolen from people celebrating the winter solstice, by putting up "ever-green" trees to symbolize a long happy life, nothing to do with jesus)
Overall, i actually liked this display more than i thought it would, althought i think they could fix it up a little more to make it more attractive, for example i had to fix two of the signs because they were knocked over, also, they are very short, so i had to look wierd bending over on the grass to read them, also, they are a little small and hard to see, i think they should have made them more obvious, but as far as the content on the cards, A+.
