The Multicultural Development Center is throwing its annual Find Yosef a Holiday festival Friday for everyone on campus to attend.
The event offers food, entertainment, activities and the opportunity to learn about international celebrations during this holiday season.
“It’s an ongoing tradition,” said Samantha Beskin, a graduate assistant for the Multicultural Development Center. “I think it’s even been going on longer than the center has been in existence, which is over 20 years.”
The room will be set up with booths for each of the 21 holidays represented this year. At each booth, representatives will have an informative poster and food or some other item to represent their chosen holiday.
Individual students, faculty members, clubs and organizations who wished to be involved in Find Yosef a Holiday were asked to fill out a registration form listing their top three holiday choices and the reasons why they wish to be involved.
Guests are encouraged to visit and talk to representatives from all 21 booths.
“If they go to all of them and get each signed they get a goody bag,” Beskin said.
Aside from the “big three,” Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa, in past years the fair has included more obscure holidays, like Irish St. Stephens Day, Hmong New Year and The Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
This year, as in years past, the Jewish Student Association Hillel will have a booth for Hanukkah, complete with snacks, storytelling and a Dreidel.
“It’s very interesting to see how many people actually have no idea that a Hanukkah story even exists, so it’s really fun for us to tell the story to the participants,” said Hillel President Lauren Fine.
Fine and the other volunteers from Hillel plan to play a game at their booth in order to teach guests what the Dreidel and the Hebrew letters on it represent.
“Hanukkah is one of the most fun Jewish holidays, and it’s great to share our traditions with everyone,” she said.
The World Religions Club will be presenting Egyptian Coptic Christmas, a Christmas celebration that falls on a different day on the Coptic calendar than it does on the Gregorian calendar that most Western nations follow.
Kwanzaa will be absent from the festival this time around, since the Black Student Association’s annual Kwanzaa festival falls two days before Find Yosef a Holiday this year. Instead, BSA will be representing the Moravian Love Festival, a potluck-style celebration that traces its roots to the Agape feast of the early church.
The event is free to the public and begins at 7 p.m. in the Blue Ridge Ballroom of Plemmons Student Union.
Story: EMMA SPECKMAN, Senior A&E Reporter