CHRISTMAS AS A SECULAR, UNIVERSAL AFFAIR

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I have been instructed to do a Christmas unit with my students, so we have been working on very simple vocabulary - stocking, Santa Claus, present, ornament, Christmas card, Christmas tree, candy cane - and talking a bit about the difference in Christmas (slash holiday) traditions between France, the United States, and Britain. I will get into the details about the differences once I feel like I have a bit better of a handle on them, but for the moment, I have found something else to be extremely interesting. Despite the differences in tradition and even in religion between people in France and elsewhere, Christmas is something that is now common to almost everyone. Even for my Muslim students, for whom Christmas means nothing in terms of religious (or even cultural, originally) significance, Christmas has become something that everyone has in common. Christmas has become a secular, universal affair. We do not have crackers in the United States, neither the French nor the Brits have a Christmas ham, and what are “boules” in French are “balls” in England and are “ornaments” in the States. However, everyone knows Christmas in some form, and it is actually quite easy to do an entire unit on Christmas while keeping it entirely secular and involving everyone.

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