Welcome back to Christmas Traditions Around the World. Hi, I'm Z Michelson, and this is the podcast where we travel the globe exploring the most fascinating, surprising, and heartwarming holiday traditions. Now, in today's episode, we're going to be celebrating lights, community, creativity, and all of these are the essential parts of Christmas traditions around the world. Can you believe that? We're talking lights here. And the first place that I am going to go is going to go to the Philippines. Yep, I said the Philippines. They have this thing called the Giant Lantern Festival. What's the giant lantern festival you say? Well, here in San Fernando in the Philippines, they host the world's famous giant lantern festival. Now when I say giant, I mean giant. These lanterns are enormous. Some are over twenty feet tall. Can you imagine that? A twenty foot tall lantern and it glows with a thousands and thousands of lights and it turns the town into a galaxy of color. Wouldn't you like to see that? And again, this is their holiday tradition. That's in San Fernando in the Philippines. It's called the Giant Lantern Festival. The Giant Lantern Festival. I would like to see that. Sounds beautiful. I'm gonna have to take a look. I'm sure they have pictures on on the web. Well, we have talked about Mexico on some of the other episodes, but here I'm gonna be talking about Las Posadas, Mexico. Now here in Las Posadas for nine nights. Nine nights, families reenact Mary and Joseph's search for a shelter. This is pretty cool. They go traveling from house to house, they're singing, they're praying, and ending each night with a celebration, often featuring a pinata breaking. So they go from house to house. This is really cute. And they look for a place to stay, and then they celebrate. And again, that's in Las Posadas, Mexico. Nine nights, they reenact Mary and Joseph's search for a shelter. So what kind of traditions does your family celebrate? I'd love to hear from you. Send me an email, cmichelson at gmail.com. Maybe one of your traditions might just make it on to my next year's holiday tradition show. So we're gonna go from Mexico now to Colombia called Caroling with Lanterns. So again, we had the uh giant lantern festival in the Philippines, and now Colombia has Caroling with the lanterns. Here's how that happens. In Colombia, the Colombian children celebrate on December 7th, the day of the candles. And by lighting lanterns and singing through the streets, entire neighborhoods glow warmly as people welcome the Christmas season together. This is how they ring in the Christmas season. The children celebrate and they light the lanterns and they sing through the streets. Sounds almost like our caroling over here, doesn't it? Sounds that way. Everybody goes caroling. But now we're gonna go from a nice warm Columbia to a little bit of a chilly Poland. And I apologize in advance if I pronounce this name wrong. Wigilia, Poland. Now, in Poland, Christmas Eve dinner begins only when the first star appears in the sky. That's interesting in itself. What if it's cloudy? The feast includes twelve meatless dishes. Okay, and these meatless dishes, they represent the apostles. And the family share a special wafer called O Top. I don't know how to pronounce that. It's O-P-T-A-T-E-K. And it's a wafer and it's used as a blessing. So the family share this. There's 12 meatless dishes, and it's representing the apostles. And that would be Christmas Eve dinner. Pretty interesting. Now I know when the first star appears in the sky here in Florida, usually the skies are clear, but if it's not clear, I wonder if they have a timeline. Like if it's not out by six o'clock, we're sitting down to dinner. But again, this is impalling. I'd like to see how that goes. That sounds like a lot of fun. Most of these places that I've been talking about all sound like fun. And you know something? When you're traveling and you're going over the pond or across the seas or wherever you're traveling to during the holiday season, remember to be courteous to their traditions, which is nice if you can participate in some of their traditions. Gives you something new, or maybe you want to share something from their tradition to come into your tradition. I think that's pretty cool. You know, you've heard me talk about the pickle in in the German German heritage where they hide the pickle in the tree. Maybe you should start hiding the pickle ornament. Just add a little spice to your current traditions. So that being said, this is it for this little small vignette of Christmas traditions around the world. I'm Z Michelson. Thank you for listening today. And remember, from glowing lanterns to the starlit dinners, these traditions show how Christmas brings people together with warmth and light. And I have one more episode before we close our season out, so please stay tuned next week. And again, these are all very short, very easy to listen to, just hearing a little tidbit about this and that of the different countries. I can't wait to celebrate with some of these countries around the world. Thanks for listening again. And if you have any Christmas traditions you think I should talk about, zmichelson at gmail.com. And remember what I always say reach for those stars when traveling, and if you can only get to the moon, at least you made the trip. Have a great holiday season.