Over the holiday season Southwest students have various traditions to celebrate, whereas some don’t celebrate at all.
The typical stuff over the holiday season for those celebrating Christmas is often spending time with friends and family, as well as opening up lots of presents that have been graciously waited for under the Christmas tree and in stockings. Lots of students help their families in decorating the Christmas tree as one of their many holiday traditions, however not everyone does these things.
“I don’t do the tree or stocking thing and I’ve never had a Christmas present in my life and I’m glad,” junior Keanon Swan said.
Ever since he was young, that was how he knew Christmas to be.
Also, in preparation for Christmas, many families will bake a lot of cookies and give various gifts to those they love and care for. Often gifts such as these are taken for granted, people just assume, it’s Christmas, I’m going to get gifts.
“People expect gifts and presents, when that goes against the entire concept of a gift,” Swan said, “It is supposed to be at the discretion of the person and I want a gift to be genuine because someone feels in their heart to give it to me, not because everyone else in society gives presents at that time”.
People associate Christmas with Santa Clause and the many other Christmas figures as well. For most of us since many years ago we have been told that Santa brings us our gifts on Christmas eve, and that he only gives these gifts to us if we’re good children. Whereas if we’re bad, we get coal in our stockings, and Santa’s always watching us.
“It makes me sad that parents lie to their kids,” Swan said, “My parents never lied to me and told me straight up from the beginning that there was no Santa Clause or Easter bunny and I consider myself blessed that my parents had enough courage to tell me the truth when society made it acceptable to lie”.
Besides your typical winter activities, Swan and his family go out of their way with their caring hearts for the holidays. “As a family we will go out and do volunteering at Harvesters or something throughout the year,” Swan said. Volunteering during the winter is a very necessary thing in our society. When the cold comes it is hard to survive without certain things taken for granted by the majority of us.
Not only at Christmas time, but throughout the year Swan and his family are very strong in their faith even though they don’t celebrate your typical christian holidays. “I am very strong in my faith because I don’t celebrate Christmas for the music, presents, Santa, the lights nor the eggnog,” Swan said, “I celebrate it solely for Jesus and if my heart compels me to give then I will”. Besides Christmas the Swan family doesn’t celebrate the majority of holidays like many of the rest of us do, but instead focus year round on their strong faith life.