Merry Christmas, Feliz Navidad, Buon Natale, Fröhlich Weihnachten.

These words mean the same thing. Some you may understand, and some you may not, but there is one element that is universal: Christmas. What is not universal is the way we celebrate it.

In Spain, where I am from, we receive gifts on Jan. 6 from Los Reyes Magos, The Three Wise Men.
Marisol Aguilar, a senior from Mexico, has similar traditions.

“We do not believe in Santa Claus,” she said. “We do Posadas, which start nine days before Christmas. They lead up [every day] all the way until Christmas Eve. The church community, or your family if you have a big family, gets together and hosts the party and [everyone else] goes and they knock on the door, and they sing, and they ask if they can come in just like Joseph and Mary did.”

In Italy, senior Martina Urbinati enjoyed traditional meals during Christmas.

“In my city, we have special meals for Christmas that, if you go out of our city [nobody] knows. Every city has special meals for Christmas,” said Urbinati, a foreign exchange student. “We have a kind of salami for Christmas that is from my city. And everyone in the family has to prepare something to feed [everyone] for Christmas, and we share.”

Cedric Fuss, a junior foreign exchange student from Germany, finds his traditions similar to Americans, with a few twists.

“On the 23rd, we buy a Christmas tree, and then we get the presents on the 24th, in the evening,” he said. “We don’t get them on the 25th. [On Christmas day,] most times my family comes and then we eat potato salad with sausage and then you get [more] presents.”

Joo Young Lee, a Korean sophomore, also finds her family’s way of celebrating Christmas very American — including presents under the tree and watching the Old Fashioned Christmas Parade. But they celebrate New
Year’s differently.

“For New Years Day this year, our family is hosting a traditional Korean memorial service for our ancestors that happens every year,” she said. “A Korean tradition for New Years Day other than the memorial service is for children and young adults to formally bow to their elders, and we listen to their expectations/wishes for us for the new year, and in turn they gift us with a small amount of money.”

Some find it difficult to celebrate Christmas their way while in the United States.

“It’s harder because people work all the time,” Aguilar said. “And you can’t always have the family together, because there’s always a schedule. In Mexico, everyone always lived in the same town. It’s harder to get together with people because of work schedules. St. Johns here in Lawrence sometimes helps with it. They have to do it on the weekends, and there will only be one Posada that the church does, because everybody works during the week. In Mexico it was every day leading up to Christmas.”

Young’s New Year’s tradition is also very difficult to celebrate.

“Since all the elders in my family do not live in America, they often give me their New Years greetings/expectations through the phone,” she said.

Some have yet to celebrate Christmas here and are eager to see how it will pan out.

“My family and my friends will share their kind of traditions with me, and I will do the same with my traditions,” Urbinati said, “The biggest thing we do, that I will do for my friends and my family, (is that) I will make a lot of presents. Not buy, but make presents, in the Italian way. It will be something they will remember about me.”