From The Bank Street Family Center

Should We Celebrate Holidays in School?
By Diana Musa and Heather Prince-Clarke

There are several factors that influence how we celebrate holidays at the Bank Street Family Center. Our overaching philosophy of inclusion dictates that we find ways for every member of our community to be included in our daily classroom activities. Ours is a community rich in cultural and family diversity. It would be close to impossible for any childcare program to meet each family’s unique and wondrous holiday rituals both religious and secular.

We believe that family and cultural traditions greatly influence the ways in which people choose to celebrate holidays. We therefore support the idea that families will celebrate holidays in their own ways, and that this is best done within the family unit.

We do not pretend that holidays don’t exist at the Family Center. Instead, we follow each child’s lead when we talk about the various ways in which his/her family celebrates holidays in their communities. For instance, at a Friday circle time when we share our plans for the weekend, we might discuss how Sarah is going to pick out a tree or that Andrew is wearing his Shabbat shoes to school and discuss who is going to come over for Rosh Hashanah.

In addition, we encourage parents to bring in food items to share at snack time. Children can learn more about their own and other people’s holidays through books and other activities in the classroom, which help to reinforce the importance of holidays as shared cultural experiences.

Families also bring in food to share as part of birthday celebrations, which are an important part of our classroom community. While at these times the focus is on one individual, birthdays are still a shared experience because everyone has a birthday.

Contemporary celebrations of religious and secular holidays tend to be commercialized and quite overstimulating for children. Parents are also bombarded with portrayals of what the media presents as the most salient aspects of holidays. We like to think that the Family Center provides parents and children with a safe haven from all of the holiday hoopla.

As part of our developmentally appropriate curriculum, we emphasize the process rather than the product. Your child’s learning occurs in the doing of things, not by the results. During holiday seasons, many of the traditional projects that are made in childcare programs emphasize the product. Since our children are still at a stage where the process is primary over product, we do not engage in the making of perfect handprint turkeys. Each family must make their own decisions regarding if and how they will celebrate holidays in their homes and communities, so we leave the celebrating to them.

Diana Musa and Heather Prince-Clarke are teachers of a mixed-age classroom ranging from 18 months to three years old at the Bank Streek Family Center.

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