The holiday season brings a lot more celebrations than just Hanukkah, Christmas and Kwanzaa. Setsubun, Bodhi, World AIDS Day, New Year's Day, winter solstice and the mainstream holidays were showcased at the second annual Holiday Carnival this Monday in the Student Union flag room.
The tables at the event featured information and activities about the various holidays.
"Each table consists of an educational piece, whether it's one of these boards or handouts or something, a decorative piece, which is the table cloth...part of it is decorating it to be appropriate to that holiday. The third piece is just a fun piece, which is food appropriate to that holiday," said Peter Smith, assistant director for residential life.
At one table, guests could make Swedish stars, while at another they could string popcorn and make paper chains for Christmas trees.
According to Smith, the event was to share knowledge about different holidays.
"Students feel more comfortable in an environment where they're being represented. Knowing that somebody bothered to represent their culture, their religion, their beliefs will make them feel more comfortable," he said.
The idea behind the event was that the visitors were getting only a small taste of all the holidays at once, Smith explained.
Christopher Wirz, an academic assistant in mechanical engineering, felt that the carnival's location in the Student Union flag room was an improvement from last year and provided the opportunity for more students to attend.
"Last year (the carnival) was in Harriman Hall on South Campus, and it wasn't really accessible to a lot of the students," he said. "This year it's right here in the flag room, so people coming from classes can just come right off the Spine."
Wirz ran a table with his friend Robert Flanagan, a junior physics major, where visitors learned about the origins of the German Christmas and were also treated to gingerbread cookies.
"A lot of American traditions came form Germany, including but not limited to the Christmas tree, St. Nicholas himself and of course gingerbread," Wirz said.
Other types of holidays were represented with poster-boards provided by Student Life. These boards featured holidays like Kwanzaa, New Year's Day and even Festivus from the NBC sitcom, Seinfeld.
"Student Life let us borrow all of these boards, so it's really kind of rounded out. Even though we don't have a display table for each one of those, it makes the program fuller to have all of that extra information about the holidays," Smith said.
Though it is not a traditional winter holiday, there was also a World AIDS Day table at the carnival, featuring cookies and condoms in order to attract people to their booth and spread more information.
"I think World AIDS Day is a more important holiday in the respect that it promotes being safe when you're having sex," said Kyle Carbone, a sophomore computer science major. "People realize that it is a big problem and that we really need to start doing something about it."
Levina Walkes, an early childhood education major, felt the carnival was very informative.
"(My friend) saw a poster, and she thought it would be nice to go and learn about other cultures," she said. "It's very informative - you learn stuff that you don't learn in lectures, it's a god experience."
Raphael McKirchy, a senior electrical engineer major and volunteer for the carnival, spoke about how it was just a good way to have fun and learn.
"It's a clean event, no one's doing anything wild - we're all just here to have a good time," he said.
McKirchy, along with friend Jonathan Burgio, a senior business major, ran a table about the history behind Christmas traditions.
"This specific table is telling the story of how candy canes came to be. And the cookies were (shaped like) Christmas trees, telling how Christmas trees came to be," Burgio said.
According to Smith, the carnival may be just the beginning of the holiday celebrations this year. Smith and his committee are considering having a similar carnival for the spring semester.
"We're thinking about doing a program like this in the spring, as well, and that would be brand new," Smith said. "It would be the first time we did one in the spring, because the holidays represented are pretty much from November to January."
The annual holiday carnival will be returning next year, hopefully with even more volunteers, according to Smith.
"We will be doing it again next year, I'm sure, and we're really hoping that as the word gets out about this program, that student groups will get more involved," Smith said.
