[tsl/leadership/teen] Christmas Around the World

Christmas is a very common holiday around the world. We all acknowledge that almost every country celebrates it, but do we know how they celebrate Christmas? For this reason, I decided to build an exhibit to showcase how different countries celebrated Christmas. The countries that I had built an exhibit for was Mexico, Australia, Nigeria, Italy, India and Japan. Starting with Mexico, I took all the attendees around the exhibit room to talk about the different pictures that were up. After going around the room, I had announced a “contest”. The participants were to take a photo in second life regarding what Christmas meant to them. Anything and anyone (with their consent) could be used in the snapshot. The winner of the snapshot contest would have their photo put onto the wall in the exhibit. The snapshots were handed in, and so it was then time for a discussion. Teens answered questions about what they saw in the exhibit, such as the similarities between the different countries and the common themes of Christmas. Overall, the ideas of food, thankfulness and family were relevant in every single country.

Overall, I think event ran pretty smoothly with a minimal amount of downtime, except for the time given to produce a snapshot. The tour gave explanations of each photo to expand the general knowledge. The discussion towards the end of the event really made me realize that teens are able to understand any topic, regardless of the complexity. The questions weren’t just answered, but were expanded by the participants. If I were to do the event again, I would have had higher level questions ready for the discussion, also I would have addressed some ways how teens can help their society with the information they just obtained. I would do the event again in a heartbeat and thanks to all that came, and I hope you will be able to use what you learned for Christmas in 2009.