As you all probably know by now, I am Iranian and grew up in Utah. And Utah, as most people know, is a very religious state, so Christmas is a major holiday here. There wasn’t much exposure to different religions and holidays for me outside of the holidays I celebrate as an Iranian. I also attended very Caucasian schools which focused so much on Christmas that the entire first part of the year was dedicated to getting ready for the Christmas concerts we would put on come December. There wasn’t any education on holidays like Hanukkah or Kwanzaa since most of the kids at my schools were Mormon and didn’t celebrate different holidays. This meant that as a young kid, it felt like if I didn’t celebrate Christmas I was weird.
My parents immigrated to the U.S. from Iran about 5 years before I was born, so they didn’t have a lot of time to acclimate to the holidays and traditions that many people in the U.S. celebrate. In fact, they didn’t have much of an interest to do so because they had their own holidays that they grew up celebrating. So for my sister and I, we celebrated the same holidays they did and focused on our heritage instead of where we were. This changed when we went to elementary school. According to my parents, when my sister and I started attending elementary school, we started noticing how different we were from other kids because we didn’t celebrate Christmas. We didn’t have the traditions our classmates had, and we didn’t do things like decorate a Christmas tree. My parents noticed how upset my sister and I were about being left out of this holiday so they decided to start celebrating it with us. Over time we started incorporating the traditions we noticed from other people and built up the holiday.
I don’t think I ever truly believed in Santa Claus or things like that. To me, he was just something I would see when I went to the mall. I noticed that presents under the tree had my parents handwriting on them, so they couldn’t have come from Santa. I wasn’t upset about it, but it was another thing that separated me from my classmates. Since I didn’t celebrate Christmas for so many years, I thought it was strange that Santa would come deliver presents to all the other kids but not me. Now that I’m growing up, I have noticed that my parents don’t have an interest in celebrating Christmas anymore since it was mainly just something they did for us as children. But now it is so ingrained in me that it is hard to let go. It was difficult to fit in as and Iranian American growing up, but celebrating Christmas was a way for me to blend in with other kids.
Christmas still isn’t the biggest holiday in my family, that honor is reserved for Iranian New Years, but it is something that is fun to celebrate over a long break. It’s a way to show appreciation for my family members and spend time together. I don’t associate Christmas with religion, even though it is a Christian holiday. Celebrating it has actually given me more of an appreciation for the Iranian holidays I celebrate, and I am grateful for that. So on behalf of me and my Iranian family, happy holidays no matter what you celebrate!