By: Adeena Syed
Traditions. Religion. Family.
The reasons and ways Hershey High School students celebrate the holidays are as varied as the students.
Some students aren’t particularly religious and don’t have any special religious traditions. Hershey High School junior, Ava Helm is one such student. For Helm, the traditions mostly center around food.
“We’re German, so we always make a lot of different types of German food,” said Helm
For HHS junior Zoe Rauscher, a devout Catholic, religious traditions are central to her family’s holiday experience. Rauscher said her family attends church every year to light the advent candle in December. An advent candle is a candle with five wicks, three purple and two pink. Rauscher also said that even though the rest of her family doesn’t do it, she also likes to have prayer cards as well.
“And then we just have the usual cookies and decorations,” Rauscher said.
For some students, holiday traditions are about making new traditions. Liza Gobet, HHS junior, said that Christmas for her wasn’t very traditional at all. “We used to make food,” said Gobet, “But now we usually just go out to eat.”
Christmas isn’t the only holiday celebrated during December by HHS students. For HHS junior Max Dadswell, a Jew, celebrating Hanukkah is important.
“We open presents and light the menorah every night,” Dadswell said, “My mom also makes latkes on the first night. We play the dreidel, too.”
Dadswell explained the dreidel. “You put something in the middle, like chocolate, and if you get gimel (a letter on the dreidel) you take all the chocolate. Or if you get hay, you take half and then if you get a shin, you put two or three pieces in.” According to Dadswell, the tradition of the dreidel started in ancient times when the Jews were still ruled by the Greeks.
“They weren’t allowed to read the [Torah], so when a Greek soldier would walk by they would hide and play the dreidel to act like they weren’t doing anything wrong,” said Dadswell.
All students have their own traditions, whether those are religious traditions or not. But one thing that they have in common is that they all center around spending time with family.