“We go to night mass at a Catholic church, and y’know, gift giving, that whole sh’bang.”

– Andrew Sailer

“When we’re in Ames, we celebrate it kind of normally, just standard setting up the tree, lights etc…but when we go to Colombia, we join our family and engage in other stuff. Because Christmas is much more orthodox, it’s more focused on the birth of Jesus… Colombian Christmas songs are really weird. They’re all in a minor key, and they’re sang by children. They’re all super slow, and they all sound super depressing. Everyone’s playing these depressing sounding songs that just go on and on forever. ”

– Andres Cordoba

“We don’t do a whole lot. The main holiday we celebrate in the wintertime is hanukkah. We light the candles and do that stuff, but it’s not really that major of a holiday in Judaism compared other holidays. Yom Kippur and Passover are two big ones. Most people probably think of hanukkah as one of the major holidays just because it falls at the same time as christmas but it’s not. But those are usually more important, where there’s alot more celebration that goes into those.”

– Nitzan Friedberg

Throughout the year, whenever things are happening, we write them on little slips of paper and put them in this box, so everytime we go out to do something we put it in this box, and on new years eve we throw them up in the air and get to reread all the great things we did that year.

– Mr. Todd