Question: Where can I find information about holiday customs, food, and recipes from countries around the world?
Research: The library has a ton of books and databases providing information about holiday celebrations around the world. Each country has its own unique traditions, foods, games, and activities.
Several books that include a variety of holidays in different countries
are:
Multicultural
Cookbook for Students
Kids Multicultural
Cookbook
Around the World
Art and Activities
Kids Around the World
Celebrate
You can access a full-text copy of the Multicultural Cookbook for Students on the Electric Library database. When you’re in the database enter your country of choice on the keyword line, scroll down the page to advanced searching and type multicultural cookbook in the publication line, finally click Search. This full-text database is available at all libraries in the system.
To find additional books in the collection, search the library catalog using
either Subject or Keyword to search the particular holiday you’re interested
in. For example, Hanukkah in the subject line will bring up many books
about Hanukkah. A few of these are:
Family
Treasury of Jewish Holidays
Hanukkah: Celebrating
the Holidays of Light
Several books with Kwanzaa customs are:
Complete
Kwanzaa
How to Plan a Kwanzaa
Celebration
Kwanzaa: A
Celebration of Family, Community and Culture
Some Christmas books with customs, food and recipes:
Joy
to the World: A Family Christmas Treasury
Christmas Everywhere
Christmas: Merry
Ideas
Going Online
There are too many holiday websites to name here so how about a few
really good ones!
The Jewish Outreach Institute How We Celebrate site presents concise explanations about how all of the Jewish holidays, including Hanukkah, are celebrated.
Chanukah on the Net offers a fun interface to Jewish festivities, food, and activities.
To read up on Christmas traditions from around the world visit Christmas.com Around the World!. You’ll also find recipes and other activities like holiday screensavers and access to Elves in Black and The X-mas Files.
For information on Kwanzaa visit the Official Kwanzaa website. This site offers authorative, accurate and expansive account of Kwanzaa, the African American and Pan African holiday. The site includes information on its origins, concepts and practice.
The Multi-Cultural Calendar presents a selection of holidays searchable by month, by country and by specific holidays. For each entry a description of the holiday is offered from someone affiliated with the specific country from which the holiday originates or who has some other connection to the special day.
For more holiday resources in both print and online visit our Holidays and Festivals Online Research Center where you’ll find Cinco de Mayo, Diwali, Ramadan and more!
Music is a big part of our holiday celebrations. Central Library’s
4th floor Research Center has a large collection of holiday music.
This fun website www.mistletunes.com/ gives
lots of history, stories, and information about rock ‘n roll Christmas
music.
Here’s another tip – if you need to know the names of Santa’s reindeer, check out Fast Facts!
If TCCL doesn’t have books and other materials you need for your research you can Interlibrary Loan them, which means we borrow them from another library system for you. If you choose to do this, request the materials as soon as possible because it sometimes takes several weeks for them to come in.
Once you have all materials for your paper, it is time to start writing. If you need some help the library has many writing manuals; the Primary Source Page lists a few of them and there are several Writing pathfinders you might find useful as well.
If you have any questions, contact your local library or ask a librarian!