Multiculturalism and Holidays

Firstly, we think it’s also really important to talk about different types of holidays. This is going to be really useful to you especially in this topic, but you can also mention it in different topic too.

We can divide these special days into certain groups, the first group can be public or bank holidays. On these days all the public institutions are closed and usually we use these days off to commemorate on some special day that happened in history. There are many examples of these, but we picket the most relevant for you, like – Anniversary of Ending od the Second World War, Slovak National Uprising, Slovak Constitution Day, we can also mention some holidays celebrated especially in USA, the Independence Day, The Thanksgiving Day. Many people also celebrate holidays that are religiously based, such as Christmas, Ester, All Saint’s Day. Some of these holidays became so popular that they are also celebrated by non-believers or atheists. We also have special holidays that are dedicated to celebrating only some special persons in our life or group or people, like Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, National Woman Day, St’s Valentine Day.

But on the other hand, celebrations of Christmas in the English-speaking countries are little different. They also have a special dinner on the 24. December, but they usually eat roasted turkey and Christmas pudding. In these countries they get their gifts on the Christmas Day, which is on 25. December, they also believe that they are brought by Santa Claus, which is the main difference between us because we get our gifts on the Christmas Eve, 24. December, after the dinner and it is believed that they are brought by Jesus. In Britian they have a special day called Boxing Day, which is celebrated on the 26. December. This day originated in the Middle Ages when people gave little presents to the poor and the richer people gave special gifts to their workers, that worked on Christmas day as a reward for their work.

Halloween is another holiday that has a worldwide popularity. On this day kids go treat or treating, dresses in some costumes and they knock on the doors in neighbourhood expecting to get some candy. The popularity of Halloween has also come to over country, and many Halloween parties are being held every year. But what are the origins of Halloween. Somebody would tough that it originated in America, but that is not true. The origins of Halloween are from Ireland, where Celts celebrated festival called Samhain. It symbolised the end of summer and beginning of winter. Also, they didn’t celebrate it by carving pumpkins into Jack o’Lanterns, but they carved turnips or beets to ward off evil spirits. In Slovakia we have an alternative holiday to Halloween which is called All Saint’s Day. On this day most people go to the cemeteries and light up candles for their loved ones. They can also pray by the grave to help them reach heaven.

Multicultural society consist of groups of people who have different customs, religion, language, lifestyles, etc. All these groups live together and make up a society where people celebrate different holidays have different customs. This society can have its ups and downs and can be formed by many different groups of people.

In Slovakia there are many minorities living among us, such as Czechs, Hungarians, Ruthenians, Ukrainians, Vietnamese, Arabic groups. All the human rights, including political, economic, cultural and civil rights of minorities living among us are guaranteed by the Slovak Constitution. The biggest of these minorities is the Hungarians. They mostly live at the south border of our country. They can use their language at public institutions, such as post offices, shops also they can use their language in school, and it can be also taught there as main language. Furthermore, they can publish their own newspapers or magazines in Hungarian. This is also connected to that they can have the names of cities, villages or even streets in Hungarian. The Hungarian minority can have their representative in our parliament, so they can further defend their rights. Another big minority in Slovakia is Roma. Against this community are many prejudices, such as they don’t want to work, or they are looked down for their lack of hygiene. This prejudices mostly comes from that this minority are originally travellers, dancers, fortune tellers, singers. I think our people are generally tolerant to minorities living among us. This can be especially in that for example Hungarian minority has many rights in our country. But in the other hand Slovaks has many prejudices mostly against Roma people. Government and non-government organisations are trying to solve this problem with better integration of Roma people in our society, by giving them work opportunities or places to live in.

The main advantage of multicultural society is that we can enrich our own culture with traditions and customs from other societies. Example of this can be that Afro-American have contributed to the development of different genres of music that have been originally popular just among this minority. These genres are jazz, reggae, rap or mostrecently hip-hop. Moreover, these minorities can enrich our culture with their different cuisines. We can especially see this in that there are many chines or Indian restaurants in our cities. Other advantage of multicultural society is that when children from other minorities live and grow up among each other, they can be more tolerant towards these minorities. With this we can also eliminate many prejudices directed to other minorities. Also, we can learn many things from each society such as their history or local customs, not just from movies or books but with their contact, which is also helpful eliminating racial prejudices.

But, on the other hand, multicultural society can have its drawbacks. We already talked about situations that can lead to enriching our own culture with other culture just by talking to someone from other society. But this can also lead to misunderstanding, tensions between different groups of people and in extreme cases to violent or military conflicts. Furthermore, the risk of terrorist attacks and spread of extreme racist ideologies or religious fundamentalism and hatred, are becoming modern trend in our society. Many also point out that we can forget our own cultural heritage, caused by the all the multiculture crisis and all the new trends that are becoming more popular than our own culture and customs.

In conclusion, we have discussed some ups and downs of living in multicultural society. But we should always remember that society is going to be always influenced by how we all tolerated each other. Furthermore, we must remember that when we have some opinion on something that doesn’t always mean that everyone will have the same opinion. We should we prepared to hear people to disagree with us and also to accept the opinion of others.