By Mike Sloan
Holiday season is approaching and a recent poll on campus showed most students are excited to celebrate Christmas though some will observe Hanukkah and others won’t celebrate at all.
In an informal poll conducted on campus of 100 College of Southern Nevada students, 90 plan to celebrate Christmas while three will celebrate Hanukkah and none for Kwanzaa. Notably the poll revealed that seven—or seven percent—don’t celebrate any holiday at all in December.
In that poll, of the 90 who celebrate Christmas, 28 celebrate strictly for religious purposes while the other 62 celebrate mostly to be with family and not necessarily because of religious reasons.
The numbers at CSN closely mirror those of the entire country.
According to Pew Research Center’s report dated Dec. 21, 2015, about nine-in-10 Americans said they celebrate Christmas. Approximately 96 percent of those are Christian. Interestingly a big majority of non-Christians celebrate Christmas too. There were 8 percent in the study that do not celebrate Christmas because they observe other holidays.
“I do celebrate Christmas,” said Jeasell Martinez, a student at CSN. “We are very strong believers. On Christmas Eve, in the morning we mostly prepare dinner like tamales and other traditional Mexican foods. Then at night, my family and I go to church and we light candles in celebration. When we come home at night, we have all the little kids open presents. On Christmas morning, we go to church to pray and celebrate and after that when we come home. It’s pretty much a party.”
CSN student Ryan Robles is a member of the majority of students polled who celebrate Christmas even though he isn’t a devout Christian.
“My family is not really all that religious,” Robles said. “So, no, we don’t [believe] but we celebrate Christmas anyway. We usually kind of get up early and open presents. It’s mostly kind of just a day that all relax a bit. We all just have a big dinner at the end.”
Other students celebrate other holidays.
“We do Las Posadas,” Elias said. “We go to our family’s homes and we pray and sing to Baby Jesus. We all exchange presents but we mostly get on our knees and we sing and [pray] to the Baby Jesus back and-and-forth. That’s mostly what we do. Before we eat, we all pray at the table.”
Coyote Student News at the College of Southern Nevada 