The holidays mean family, traditions, and festivities to the students here at Foran. Within the school, there are many different ways students celebrate the holidays.
Sophomore, Maddie Salai, spends the holidays with her family, celebrating traditions, and creating new memories. Her favorite tradition celebrated on Christmas Eve is “White elephant”, which her grandmother started because she thought the adults deserved gifts just as much as the kids did.
Salai states, “It’s really funny to see our family fight over which gifts go to which family because usually, we give really good gifts, and usually everyone wants the same gift.”
Salai’s family hosts Christmas Day dinner at their house. For an appetizer every year, her dad makes a Hungarian mushroom soup. Then her whole family helps to cook the main course, which is ham. Salais father is Hungarian and started the tradition of the soup, he made it once for the family and they have loved it since.
Sophomore, Cameron Ishmael, spends Christmas Eve with his family celebrating by doing one of his favorite traditions. He goes to his grandparents, where they do a gingerbread house contest. Each person has to make a house and once everyone is done his grandparents and father judge it, whoever wins gets a monetary prize.
Sophomore Abby Monahan states, “My whole family is together in the living room, we are all spending time together decorating the tree.”
On Christmas Eve, Monahan goes to her grandma’s house for dinner and opens up half of her gifts, then opens the rest on Christmas morning. On Christmas, she hosts her family and they have a big dinner with ham, mashed potatoes, and green bean casserole.
Monahan expressed that during the holiday season just doing little things with the people she cares about, really makes her holidays better.
These traditions that students here at Foran have created many memories that fill their holidays with festivities making each student’s holiday different and special to their own families.
