Kids learn about holidays around the world at Penn Museum

Mock passports given to kids at the Penn Museum as part of an event about holiday celebrations across the globe

Photo credit Hadas Kuznits/KYW Newsradio

By Hadas Kuznits, KYW Newsradio 1060

PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Kids at the Penn Museum traveled the globe without leaving the city, as the Museum celebrated holidays around the world this weekend.

Visitors to the museum were given passports with which to explore different stations to learn about holiday celebrations abroad. "You can fill it out and then you get a stamp at whatever country you visited, explained 12-year-old museum visitor Maggie Schmidt.

"It's a day where we try to shed light on all the different holiday traditions that happen around the globe," said Ellen Owens, the Penn Museum's director of public engagement. "The Festival of Lights, Diwali in India, Chinese traditions like the Mid-Autumn festival."

But there was one celebration that stood out to 11-year-old Izzy Shul. "The Yam Festival was one," she said. "I was surprised that people celebrate food — I mean, Thanksgiving but they literally celebrate food and we were learning how the music contributes to it, clothes."

Shul said she was also surprised to learn about just how many winter holidays there were. "I knew there were a lot of winter holidays," she admitted, "but I didn't know there were this many winter holidays. The Mardi Gras, I didn't know completely what it was. I knew a little bit about Kwanzaa and then they were also talking about the Islam holiday Ramadan."

Owens explained the holidays were showcased through crafts, music, dance, film, calligraphy and fashion. "A lot of the themes we see are similar across cultures like rebirth of joy and celebration, thankfulness," she said, "and I think one of the goals of this festival is to demonstrate that there's a lot of connections. It doesn't matter what culture you're from but there are a lot of spiritual traditions that overlap."