Hi, everyone!! I hope you all had a great New Year vacation. Yay!!! It's 2022 now!!!!
Yesterday (January 6th) was a special day in my country. In Japan, New Year's Day is very important. But in Canada and the U.S., Christmas is probably the most important holiday of the year. That's because in North America, Christmas is NOT just one day (December 25th). It's many days!! There is a famous song called "The 12 Days of Christmas" where I come from.
The song starts out with "On the 1st day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: a partridge in a pear tree." A partridge is a kind of bird. The next part of the song continues with "On the 2nd day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: two turtle doves, and a partridge in a pear tree." Turtle doves are also a kind of bird. In fact, as you can see from the picture above, many of the gifts in this song are birds! I love birds, so this is one of my favorite Christmas songs. And I also really like this song because it shows that we usually celebrate Christmas not just on December 25th (the 1st day of Christmas), but December 26th (the 2nd day of Christmas), December 27th (the 3rd day of Christmas), and so on. The 12th day of Christmas comes on January 5th!!!
Here is a photo of a Christmas tree after Christmas is over. In my country, we often wait until all the 12 days of Christmas are finished before we take our tree down and put it out with the trash. Since January 5th is still thought of by many people as "one of the 12 days of Christmas", then January 6th is a common day to take off all of our Christmas decorations from our tree and house. January 6th is also a kind of holiday for many people. That is the day when Jesus Christ (イエス・キリスト) was visited by three important kings, more than 2000 years ago. They gave Jesus's family some presents. So after January 6th, Christmas is finally over and everyone can go back to their regular life. Here's a picture of the kings visiting Jesus a long time ago:
Hopefully you all got some nice Christmas presents this year too, and enjoyed your winter vacation!!! Now, let's study hard in 2022 and have a wonderful year together!!!!
- Peter