Holislay America

 Now that halloween has ended everybody is looking forward to Thanksgiving and Christmas. I am so excited to see how people celebrate all the holidays here, I’m pretty sure that is going to be bigger than how we do in Italy. I’ll compare how the holidays are in my country and how are in the us.

HALLOWEEN

This is the only holiday that I have tried so far. I can tell that it is HUGE here, from the home decoration to the amount of candy that people give for trick or treating. People also get crazy for the costumes. In Italy when you are a child and you go trick or treating, you are lucky if 10 families give you candy during the whole night, and they don’t give chocolate candies.

THANKSGIVING

As you know, or probably not, Thanksgiving is an American  holiday because of the Thirty-eight English settlers that arrived in America on December 4, 1619. The landing was immediately followed by a religious celebration, and  then it became a day of public thanksgiving and prayer. Since I’m not American, of course, I have never celebrated it, so now I’m so excited to see how it is and I cannot wait to try typical Thanksgiving food. 

CHRISTMAS

Christmas is definitely one of my favorite holidays. We have it in Italy but it is nothing compared to how it is here. As I understood, here people start to decorate their houses, sing Christmas songs and they buy millions of gifts from November 1st. Families here have every type of home decoration. In Italy we just have one fake tree, just a line of lights outside, and who really likes Christmas might put some candles around the house. So sad, I know.

BEFANA

This is an Italian holiday that we have that does not exist here. It is after Christmas on January 6th and it basically consists of an old woman who flies on a broom and gives candy to the good children and coal to bad kids. It is a little scary, I know. 

EASTER 

Here people dye eggs, spend time with family, and the Easter bunny who hides the basket full of candy so in the morning children search for it around the house. In Italy the only thing that we do is eat big chocolate eggs and maybe do an Easter dinner. That’s it.

I asked the other exchange from Spain, Andrea Perez Montaner if they have some holidays that they only exist there. Montaner said, “In Spain there are a lot of holidays that are celebrated only in some cities and not in all the country”.

REYES MAGOS

Is a holiday on January 6th that refers to the Three Magi, that considering the Christian tradition, they visited Jesus after his birth bearing gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.

To celebrate this day they basically spend time with their family drinking hot chocolate and eating Roscon de reyes(a cake).

FALLAS

Is a holiday celebrated only in the city of Valencia between the 15 to 19 of march. People from that city build big carnival floats and then they burn that.