So, basically every year before Christmas we have this like, uh, Advent calendar that we have that’s basically like a countdown to Christmas.

Is your family really religious? 

No. Not really religious. We celebrate Christmas and Easter pretty much. Um, and we have like this Advent calendar with 24 candles on it and this Advent calendar was passed down from my grandparents, on my mom’s side, to my family. And so we’ve kept for a long time and so like it has 24 different candles and it’s on this white board and along the way, there’s different houses and each of the houses represents a week before Christmas. And so everyday we would lite a candle and then, uh in these houses we would hide candy so whenever we would light the candle that corresponds with that house, we would get the candy inside. So it was like a fun way to countdown to Christmas.

Do you know why it’s houses or maybe it’s just because Santa comes there? 

Yeah, um, the whole scene is like supposed to represent a snow-covered landscape, so each one of these houses is basically like someone going from house to house like Santa Clause, kind of. And then the final one is a church, so it’s like on Christmas it represents, I guess, like going to Church.

Tying it all back together  to religion. 

Yeah exactly. Yeah so it’s kind of a religious, it has religious symbolism, but also cultural symbolism with like gift giving and kind of building up excitement for Christmas.

This Christmas ritual is focused more on the religious nature of the holiday through the candles and utilization of a church icon, and also is tied to the idea of legacy by having it passed from family member to family member. Chocolate and sweets are often given around Christmas, apparently, and this is something I would like to do more research on.