What are your favorite holidays? My dad told me his favorite holiday is Diwali. He remembers rows of lights and fire-crackers, and good holiday spirit. At work, we once had a Holi party - people dance kathak, bhangra, and garba, play Bob Marley songs on the guitar, and throw colored powders.  It was really fun. My husband's favorite holiday is Yule (Winter Solistice Celebration).  It is the coldest day of the year, but also the day when the days start getting longer. He laughs that it is his favorite, because he hates the snow, and he says Yule also marks the day when we'll have four more months of snow, but nonetheless, it carries a special bearing to him.  My mother-in-law's favorite holiday is Thanksgiving. She loves getting together with family and spending the evening, and likes it better than Christmas, because it doesn't involve the gift exchange.  For Christmas and Easter both, she and my father-in-law invite us to go to their church. At the church they pass out these beautiful booklets, have a candle lighting ceremony, and sing hymn. There is one hymn that sounds so beautiful (it is the one from Home Alone ;)).  It is a lot of fun to participate in it.

As a kid, we used to celebrate the holidays by making crafts, mostly.  For Christmas, kids would exchange christmas cards and candy canes.  For Easter, we'd get the plastic 'egg's filled with chocolates.  And for valentine's day, we all used to exchange valentine cards, and make crafts and knittings with hearts all over them.  Halloween was the best - all the kids would dress up in their costumes.  They decorated the whole school with pumpkins and fake spider webs, and hanging ghosts (white sheets with dots drawn on them). They would put up special orange and green lights, and the counselors would dress up like witches and tell all the kids scary stories.  Then, at night, we'd go out door-to-door in our costumes, and get tons of candy. Even at night, it was so bright and the streets were crowded with kids until late in the night. In Colorado, it is not the case, I think because it gets so cold. Almost nobody goes out, except on Pearl Street, which also gets pretty crowded on Halloween night.  Also, we'd go to haunted houses, but those were really silly, and laser shows.

I've never celebrated any other holidays - like Chinese or Jewish New Year (though a colleage once brought us moon-cakes for the Chinese Lunar New Year), but I'm curious about what they're like, and what  people enjoy most about them.

It is interesting that so many holidays share the same few aspects: decorations, food and drink, gift-exchange, and most importantly getting together with friends and family and celebrating. Some holidays hold special feeling to people, but it is hard to pinpoint or explain why these days give people such a feeling of contentment or excitement.  But it is nice to have these feelings to look forward to and enjoy.