Nowadays in the West, not many people consider the religious meaning to Christmas. Most people will not go to a religious church meeting, even at Christmas. It has become a busy race to spend money on presents, and get ready for the Day, so that it seems to be a festival to the gods of money and shopping. Every year a new debate is opened about the topic of the comercialization of this festivity and the lost of its real meaning. However, whereas someone has been trying to remember the religious meaning of Christmas and celebrates the Christian festivity, others found alternatives to this holiday.

 

Both in Italy and in the USA, Catholics try every year to stress the meaning of Christmas in order to shift people’s attention from trees and gifts to the religious celebrations and the Nativity scene. Waiting for the Christmas day, there are the four Sundays of the Advent period, when Catholics go to the churches and prepare themselves to the 25th and the midnight mass of the Eve.

In this period the creation of the Nativity scene, as the representation of the true event celebrated at Christmas, is very important. It helps parents to explain their children the reason of the importance of this day and to remember every moment they look at it the real meaning of the festival. In some families as the parents read the story of Jesus' birth, their children take turns putting together the nativity scene, and they add the people as they come up in the story. At the very least it includes the figures of Mary and Joseph with the baby Jesus in the manger. Sometimes there are also the Three Wise Men, the stable boy, the innkeeper, and other characters involved in the story of Christ's birth. In Italy parishes organize shows or competitions in order to drive people, above all children, to make the most beautiful and original Nativity scene they can do.

 

Next to those Catholics’ attempts in order to give Christmas its real meaning, there are groups of non-Catholics who created alternatives to this holiday: they are Jews and Afro-Americans.

Jews in Italy represent a very small minority (they are 45.000 out of the 15 millions who live all around the world), whereas according to a FOX News poll conducted in the USA by Opinion Dynamics Corporation in 2004, five percent of all Americans celebrate the Jewish festival Hanukkah and two percent the Afro-American December holiday of Kwanzaa.

 

Hanukkah, also known as the Festival of Lights, is an eight-day Jewish holiday that starts on the 25th day of Kislev (the third month of the ecclesiastical year and the ninth month of the civil year on the Hebrew calendar), which may be in December, late November, or, while very rare in occasion, early January. The festival is observed in Jewish homes by the kindling of lights on each of the festival's eight nights in a special Hanukkah menorah (a seven branched candelabrum lit by olive oil). In these days Jewish families play the dreidel game (a four-sided top), eat foods fried in olive oil, such as latkes (potato pancakes) and sufganiyot (jelly doughnuts). They celebrate the successfull rebellion of the Maccabees against Antiochus IV Epiphanes, when the Temple in Jerusalem was purified and the wicks of the Menorah miraculously burned for eight days with only enough oil for one day. Hanukkah gained increased importance with many Jewish families in the twentieth century, including large numbers of secular Jews who wanted a Jewish alternative to the Christmas celebrations that often overlap with Hanukkah. In recent years, an amalgam of Christmas and Hanukkah has emerged — dubbed "Chrismukkah" — celebrated by some mixed-faith families, particularly in the United States. Though it was traditional to give "gelt" or money coins to children during Hanukkah, in many families this has changed into gifts in order to prevent Jewish children from feeling "left out" of the Christmas gift giving.

 

Kwanzaa is a week-long Pan African secular holiday primarily honoring African-American heritage. It is observed from December 26 to January 1 each year, almost exclusively by African-Americans in the United States of America. Kwanzaa consists of seven days of celebration, featuring activities such as candle-lighting and pouring of libations, and culminating in a feast and gift-giving. It was founded by Ron Karenga, and first celebrated from December 26, 1966, to January 1, 1967. Ron Karenga created Kwanzaa during his leadership of the black nationalist United Slaves Organization, in order to give African Americans an alternative holiday to Christmas. He later stated, "...it was chosen to give a Black alternative to the existing holiday and give Blacks an opportunity to celebrate themselves and history, rather than simply imitate the practice of the dominant society." Each of the seven days of the holiday is dedicated to one of "The Seven Principles of Kwanzaa": Unity, Self-Determination, Collective Work and Responsibility, Cooperative Economics, Purpose, Creativity, Faith. Today, many African-American families celebrate Kwanzaa along with Christmas and New Year's. Frequently, both Christmas trees and kinaras, the traditional candle holder symbolic of African-American roots, share space in kwanzaa celebrating households. To them, Kwanzaa is an opportunity to incorporate elements of their particular ethnic heritage into holiday observances and celebrations of Christmas.

 

Bibliography

 

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December 14, 2006. Il Natale nel folklore. In Wikipedia, l'enciclopedia libera.Retrieved December 18, 2006 from http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Il_Natale_nel_folklore

 

Cyril Martindale (1908). Christmas. In New Advent. Retrieved December 18, 2006 from http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03724b.htm

 

December 18, 2006. Kwanzaa. In Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved December 18, 2006 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwanzaa

 

December 14, 2006. American Christmas traditions. In Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved December 18, 2006 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Christmas_traditions

 

December 15, 2006. Hanukkah. In Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved December 18, 2006 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanukkah

 

Ebrei in Italia. In I valori dei giovani - Le grandi Religioni. Retrieved December 18, 2006 from http://www.ica-net.it/Pascal/religioni/files/ebreiin.htm

 

Traditions from Website Visitors. In A search for the meaning of Christmas. Retrieved December 18, 2006 from http://www.techdirect.com/christmas/tradition.html

 

November 30, 2006. Christmas. In Soon Online Magazine. Retrieved December 18, 2006 from http://www.soon.org.uk/christmas.htm

 

Dana Blanton (June 18, 2004). Majority ok with public nativity scenes. In Foxnews.com. Retrieved December 18, 2006 from http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,105272,00.html

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