Holidays in a Cultural Context

 

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Many students, especially those who belong to the dominate culture, do not understand why the U.S. has certain holidays or days off. This lesson was designed to allow students to think about the history of countries and religious affiliations and how those influence observed holidays. 

Intercultural Communication Goal: Investigate: In my own and other cultures I can make comparisons between products and practices regarding official holidays to help me understand perspectives.

Students viewed a document about "les jours fériés" in France that is embedded in this Google Form which asked some comprehension questions, as well as asking students to find similarities between French holidays and U.S. holidays. 

The next day, we went over the questions as a class and discussed the open ended questions about how

Photo by Dan Kiefer on Unsplash

history and religion lead to certain holidays. This allowed students to notice other things, like how our (U.S.) Winter Break is always over Christmas, and how the traditional work week does not include Sundays, both of which cater to Christian citizens and residents. Some background information is needed to show that not all religions have the same day of rest/observance and holidays. This even led to the discussion about the etymology of the word "Holiday" in English. 

We also discussed the shared history of the U.S. and France with WWI and WWII where we get our Veteran's and Memorial days from (Armistice de 1918 and 8 Mai in France).

These last steps are not what occurred in my classroom, but in the future I will include it. 

Photo by Rumman Amin on Unsplash


First, I would show another similar holiday calendar from a different country and have students make inferences as to that country's history and majority religion. You could do for multiple countries/regions. 

Finally, to more wholly meet the ICC goal, we would find products associated with holidays and find out how certain regions generally celebrate the holiday (practices). This could be a small group one or two day project depending on students' background knowledge of certain holidays in different target cultures. Students would articulate the perspective on it and justify it. I think it would be beneficial to assign the same holiday to multiple groups, but assign different regions. Students would create a presentation for the class. 

Before you allow students to  research, find a common holiday for the class (likely non-religious, so perhaps New Years or Fourth of July since they all live in the U.S.), and have students share how they celebrate/observe the holiday. This is to demonstrate the diverse attitudes and practices within a community regarding a shared experience and remind students that "traditional" or common practices are not applicable to all members of a community, no matter how small; I believe that this will help guard against stereotyping and overgeneralization. 

This activity is readily adapted to any language by using holidays from that target culture(s). 

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