world scholar >> culture

Have you ever stepped through a doorway and felt that you stepped across to the other side of the globe? I did when I walked into a coffeehouse at the University of Southern California just as the final touches were being made for a celebration of the Chinese New Year. Paper lanterns hung from the ceiling, music foreign to my typical song choice came across the room from large speakers, and performers dressed as colorful creatures practiced their dance on stage.

The Chinese Students and Scholars Association at USC brought in the year of the boar with various dances and acts on the coffeehouse stage. And let’s not forget the food! I had my share of the biggest spread of Chinese dishes I have ever seen. The names and the ingredients of half the food on my plate I couldn’t tell you but my taste buds didn’t mind in the least. I had come for the excitement of seeing something I hadn’t before but the Chinese students who filled the coffeehouse to its capacity had come for something more personal. They conversed in a language I didn’t understand but I could read the looks on their faces. They had come together to feel at home in a foreign country if just for an evening. It was the same way I must have felt when I celebrated my culture’s version of New Years a few months before.

When I count down the seconds to January 1 I can’t help but feel a little sad that I’m counting down the end of the holiday season. There’s a part of me that wishes that there were more holidays to celebrate and I’m sure that many Americans feel the same way. So there’s a bit of selfish desire underlying my request for international students to celebrate holidays native to their home country in the US but I also believe it’s an idea that they’ll find to work more to their benefit than anyone else’s.

Holidays bring out memories of when we’re with our families and when we spend time at home. Celebrating a holiday on your college campus will help cure feelings of homesickness and might even put your campus in a more familiar light. It could be a time for sharing and knitting tighter bonds between fellow students native to your country or finding those native to your country in the first place. You may even make friends with curious American students who peek their heads in to find out what all celebrating is about. Many American students are interested about the world and the people who live in it. Getting them to come to your celebration of a holiday that holds religious or political significance to you is a powerful way to share your culture on your campus.

How you share your culture on your campus usually depends on how big your school is. If you wish to establish a holiday at your school on your own it may just be a matter of booking a coffeehouse or a conference room with enough tables and chairs for your guests, but if you live at a big school, like USE, chances are that the number of international students is large which means you won’t have to do it all by yourself. The International Students Assembly at USE breaks down into many sub-organizations that tend to be country specific and many of them already hold events and celebrate holidays. If you go to a big school and you want to make the arrangements for celebrating a holiday, joining or contacting these organizations is a good start. From there you can bring your ideas to people who are just as excited to mark Homowo, Diwali, Eid, or any other holiday on their calendars.

If you live on a small campus however or can’t find an organization on your campus that represents your country, you may have to broaden your search. Take DePauw University for instance. The number of international students is much smaller in comparison to larger schools, but the international students come together to find ways in celebrating their holidays. If you go to a smaller school you may have to look at organizations that are more continental rather than focused on individual countries or you could look at the community outside your campus. Churches, mosques, temples and other religious gathering places around your campus might hold the festivities you’re looking for. Invite fellow students to go with you to these events or invite the leaders from these institutions to hold the celebrations in the facilities at your school. Either way you’ll be giving the students a reason to celebrate.

All international students share one thing in common: they’re all away from home. This commonality brings many of the international students together and even if a student finds that they’re the sole representative from their country, they can rely on the other students who are far away from home to help them out, even celebrate holidays. The settings tend be more intimate but the feel is still there. A few friends and faculty at DePauw came together over a kitchen table to celebrate the Chinese New Year with traditional food and conversations about experiences. It may not have had the flare of the larger celebration I had been to at USE but it still had the heart, which when holidays are simplified, are what they’re all about.