Last week I hosted a ‘Christmas Traditions around the World’ Event at home for the children and some of their friends.
There are so many wonderful traditions around the world that it was really hard to choose just a handful to cover! The ones we looked at were:
- Mexico – Los Posadas
- Philippines – Giant Lantern Festival
- Spain – Epiphany
Los Posadas – Mexico
I wanted to cover this tradition as it’s so fantastic, and it helps to remind the children of the reason for Christmas and helps to cover the story. Los Posadas recreates the journey of Mary and Joseph as they looked for somewhere to stay. In Mexico the event takes place each night from 16-24th December and is accompanied by celebrations and parties each night. It’s a real community event and one of generosity and love.
I found this video on YouTube to be a great video to help explain to the children about the tradition. We then decided to make our own Posadas using this Mary and this Joseph template from Twinkl.
Giant Lantern Festival – Philippines
We also looked at the amazing lantern festival in the Philippines. Each household will make a Parol – a lantern which will light the way to the celebratory Masses over the Christmas period. San Fernando, Pampango is considered to be the Christmas capital of the Philippines and they host a HUGE lantern festival each year (and 2019 marks its 101st year) and it looks superb. The children all really liked this one and this video shows some of the wonderful Parols that are created.
The children made their own lanterns to remember this festival. I had intended to decorate jars, but as there were 19 children I didn’t have enough so ordered some lantern kits from Baker Ross instead. These would look quite effective I think with an electric tealight inside.
Epiphany – Spain
Spain was an interesting country to look at as their main celebration takes place on 6th January – Epiphany. We talked about what Epiphany was, and we looked at the way Spain celebrates across the period from Christmas Eve to Epiphany. We made some three kings stick puppets using these templates from Twinkl.
Our Family Traditions
After the children had finished their crafts we had some snacks (a friend had kindly made some Greek Christmas cookies) and we shared some of our own family traditions.
We had a few that we shared, including the making of the Christmas cake in November that the children do with Damian, the annual debate between the children and Damian as to whether our Christmas tree will be having tinsel on it or not!
We also talked about the relatively new tradition of Christmas jumpers. I was wearing my new Christmas dress that the team from Shinesty sent to me. The dress is lovely, and rather excitingly it has pockets – a reason on its own to order from them! It makes a change from a jumper and is super comfy to wear as the materials is a really soft stretchy fabric and happily it washes really well.
Another person mentioned about Christmas pyjamas and the children and I are big fans of matching pyjamas. We have a set we bought last year and the children have a set of matching pyjamas that Shinesty sent to them. They haven’t worn these yet, we are saving them for Christmas eve. They feel super soft and snuggly and I’m sure they’ll be nice and warm in them on Christmas eve night.
Do you have any Christmas traditions that you do each year?
That dress is lovely Sarah. Blog about Christmas tradition was really interesting. I think I would to be home education. Is it too late for me.