Celebrating holidays with your diverse scouts

[teacher/scout]

This question came up in my diversity class for teaching and I was wondering how other people handle this in the scouting world: How do you celebrate the holiday's to include all religions,those who don't celebrate holidays and the family traditions of your scouts? Do you celebrate one, all or none? Have you come up with new ways to have one thing everyone can celebrate so as not to discriminate?

[BartHumphries]

I think it would depend on what holiday(s) your Scouts celebrate. I mean, on the one hand you could go completely nondenominational and have a sort of winter celebration (which would still offend some people) or you can go crazy and have something unique for each of some 80-odd religions or you can ask your Scouts what they celebrate and ask them how they'd like to handle it, then handle it based on what they suggest and what they'd like to do.

 

You could also celebrate a given religion's major holiday right about when that holiday occurs. This year, Hannukah and Christmas for instance are a couple weeks apart so they can easily both have their own celebrations.

 

Traditionally, my unit usually cancels our regular meetings when they're too close to a "major" religion because too many of the boys/leaders are likely to be off visiting other family members or something.

[Eagle92]

Good question. TBH I've never really encountered that problem until I became a CM and had 2 Hindus in my den. What was interesting is that they were the only ones to give me a Christmas present.

 

Anyway when I was working as a pro, one of the other pros was Jewish. He was nuts, in a good sort of way, and at the company Christmas Party, he came out with Santa Claus dressed as "Hannukah Harry," and helped hand out presents from his sack.

[KC9DDI]

I've seen two general approaches that work well:

 

1) Have a party or event some time in December. Call it a holiday/Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/Winter Solstice party - whatever is going to offend the fewest number of people. Allow individual families to bring food, activities, or show-n-tell items that represent their own traditions, and share with the group.

 

2) (My favorite): Leave the religious holidays to families and churches. Instead, in Scouting, celebrate American holidays. For example, have a "Thanksgiving feast" some time in November, Memorial Day or Labor Day picnics, 4th of July activities, etc.(This message has been edited by KC9DDI)

[John-in-KC]

Know the faith mix of the families in your Pack, Troop, or Crew.

 

If the faith mix is reasonably homogenous, celebrate.

 

If the faith mix is mixed...

- and you have a Cub Pack, do what KC9DDI said.

- and you have a Boy Scout Troop, consider not a party, but a campfire where different communities talk about their traditions.

- and you have a Venturing Crew, have a roundtable talking about faith.

 

Just don't try to do "one size fits all."

[RememberSchiff]

Nope, for our unit it not part of the program - no Christmas or Winter Holiday party, no Secret Santa or Swap. We take a break usually around second week of Dec to second week of Jan. Family time.

[shortridge]

I'm seeing this from a very different perspective nowadays. One of my daughter's friends in her second-grade class is a Jehovah's Witness, and her family does not do birthdays, Christmas, Easter, etc. I've been amazed at how quickly the kids have grasped the idea that they should talk about things differently to respect the girl's family and beliefs. They don't want her to be left out of the group when they do a holiday party, or when they pick books to read in class ("No Christmas books when you come in to read to us!" my daughter warned me.)

 

Your kids will surprise you.

[Tampa Turtle]

We (our Troop) celebrate as our charter org is a Methodist Church as are 60% of the families. Also many Catholics and a smattering of jews, moslems, and hindus. All are welcome to share their traditions --usually in the form of food. We ASM's work hard to keep things welcoming and ecumenical but not to the point of doing a generic "holiday" party.

 

I grew up in a neighborhood where we were the only christian family. A lot of it is the spirit of how things are offered. If I was invited to a Passover Seder I treated it as a honor and opportunity to learn about the connection between our faiths.

 

I would do things different for cubbies as we met in a public school, parents seemed more sensitive, and families were much more diverse. By Boy Scouting families learn more about the reverent part and we ASM's do a lot of work teaching respect for other faiths while staying true to your own.

[drmbear]

You know, it was in Scouting when I was a youth, as a leader putting together lots of what we called "non-denominational" Scout's Own services, that I developed my own beliefs on things that lead me to be Unitarian Universalist. That idea of a World Brotherhood of Scouting really had meaning to me. So I've come to appreciate what we all share, and in this case the holiday season before us provides lots to share. First, we know for a fact that humans around the globe recognized and celebrated this time of year for the return of the sun. Ruins from Stonehenge and central America and lots of others marked the shortest day. If for no other reason, we are celebrating as our ancesters have for nearly as long as there have been humans that could tell the difference. Bringing it to the present, though, there is a huge cultural connection we can all make regarding this time of year, no matter our faith. Certainly the weather and season, the start of a new year after the holidays, and even if some don't celebrate, they cannot avoid hearing holiday music, seeing the lights, hearing jokes about fruitcakes, drinking eggnog, and enjoying a fire. How better for Scouts to enjoy being together than to share food, and then possibly step out into the cold to stand around a fire, toss in a piece of wood (yule log, right?), and contemplate the Spring we know is coming? What seeds are you planning to plant? What other things, culturally, are we all affected by this time of year? Don't they come out with "Year In Review" summaries, etc? A celebration could include cheesy gifts about crazy things that happened during the year - certainly everyone in the troop did something to warrant a silly gift. I remember a guy at camp one year that allowed himself to be "tied" to a small tree with his own legs, and he wasn't able to free himself. That would definitely get a gift!!