The hustle and bustle of the holiday season can make it feel like a race to get to winter break. With performances, parties, and in-service days all fighting for attention, you’re doing your best to ensure your students learn as much as they can before their brains check out and visions of sugar plums start dancing in their heads.

With timely, engaging Christmas activities for school, you can capitalize on students’ excitement for the holiday season while still getting in the critical background knowledge and skills they need to learn.

• Discover Christmas stories from around the world in ELA
• Build background knowledge of Christmas traditions in social studies
• Try fun holiday experiments in science

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[Discover Christmas stories from around the world in ELA](id-ela)

Help your students get in the spirit of the season with Christmas stories and lessons that look at holiday traditions from around the world in your ELA classes:

Customs and traditions from across the globe

Cultural customs and family traditions are hallmarks for celebrating Christmas and other end-of-year holidays. Help students dive into where traditions come from and why they’re so important to celebrating holidays:

• Read an article about what family traditions are and why they matter.
• Discover how people around the world party and celebrate important events.
• Explore traditions and customs associated with various holidays, like Christmas, Kwanzaa, and Lunar New Year.

Discover how people celebrate Christmas in Zambia and Colombia

Paired text analyses are an exciting way to help students compare and contrast information. Use the following resources to help them look at how people in Zambia, Africa, and Colombia, South America, celebrate Christmas traditions 

• Assign the fiction story “Thoko’s Gift” by Fiske Serah Nyirongo about a family Christmas gathering in Lusaka, Zambia.
• Compare the traditions mentioned in the fictional story to those in a nonfiction article about how Afro-Colombians celebrate Christmas in February.
• Have students use a Venn Diagram to compare how different cultural groups celebrate Christmas worldwide.

Discuss the tradition of gift-giving

In many major end-of-year holidays, gift-giving is a common theme. Students can explore how and why giving presents is such a prevalent tradition with one of two paired text analyses:

• Assign the short fictional story “The Gift of the Magi” by O. Henry and/or “Legend of the Poinsettias,” a Mexican story by Angela McAllister.
• Read a nonfiction article that explores the tradition of giving holiday gifts.
• Ask students to use a paired text analysis worksheet to answer the question, “What is the main idea of each text, and how are they connected?”

Focus on charity and compassion

The holiday season is also a time when people want to give back and help others in less fortunate positions than themselves. Use this paired text analysis to explore the theme of charity:

• Have students read the fictional story “Uncle Martin” by Angela McAllister, a French tale about spreading kindness on Christmas Day.
• Assign a nonfiction text about how a donation center ran out of space to store items after an overwhelming display of kindness in one Texas community.
• Ask students to complete a paired text analysis and answer the question, “How do the genre and style of each text impact the author’s message?”

Share the classic story “A Christmas Carol”

Many students are probably familiar with the plot of Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol” from popular media, even if they’ve never read the book. Share the classic tale with them and help build background knowledge on the author, characters, and setting with resources like:

• A video biography of author Charles Dickens.
• An interactive video that explores what makes “A Christmas Carol” a classic story.
• An article that explains how social protest for Christmas inspired Dickens to write the story.

Compare and contrast celebrations for December holidays

Winter is a common time for celebrations around the world. People observe so many different holidays during this season—not just Christmas! Assign articles to help students understand, compare, and contrast topics like:

• The history of Christmas
• Little-known facts about Kwanzaa
• The history of Hanukkah
• How people celebrate Diwali

[Build background knowledge of Christmas traditions in social studies](id-ss)

Teach students more about the history and background of Christmas celebrations, traditions, and customs in social studies classes:

How do people around the world celebrate Christmas?

Christmas is a traditionally Christian holiday, but it has both religious and secular traditions. Students can learn more about how people around the world celebrate using content that explores:

• Where Christmas trees come from, and what people do with them after the holiday. 
• Why people put up Christmas lights, and where the tradition started.
• Some of the most popular Christmas foods worldwide.

How do holidays affect the economy?

Aside from family get-togethers and fun traditions, holidays like Christmas can have a significant financial impact on various sectors of the economy. Have students investigate these impacts with a targeted inquiry lesson. They’ll explore articles on topics like:

• How supply and demand affect people who buy Christmas trees.
• How impactful worldwide events—like the COVID-19 pandemic—force people to alter long-standing traditions and buying practices.
• The impact of Christmas shipping and wrapping waste on the environment and the economy.

Why do holidays bring people together?

Holidays and celebrations are perfect for family and friends to gather, reminisce, laugh, and enjoy each other’s company. A targeted inquiry lesson can help students ask questions and uncover why we associate gatherings with holidays.

• Have students read about how spending time with friends during the holidays can improve our relationships.
• Ask students to explore how interfaith families can find common ground when celebrating holidays.
• Encourage students to use a Venn Diagram to document similarities and differences they find while reading the articles.

[Try fun holiday experiments in science](id-sci)

Help bring the magic of the holidays to life with Christmas-themed experiments in science class:

Grow a crystal ornament

Help your students create a science-based craft they can hang on their Christmas tree for years! With this crystal ornament experiment, students can:

• Learn the scientific definition of a mixture.
• Discover the similarities and differences between heterogenous and homogenous mixtures.
• Complete the crystal ornament experiment to put what they learned about mixtures into practice.

Uncover the illusion behind a drinking candle

Candles are often a staple in Christmas decorations and traditions. But have your students ever heard of a candle that can drink water? Help them see the science behind this “magic trick” with the following lesson:

• Discuss the necessary elements to start a fire and how the chemical reaction of combustion keeps one burning.
• Explore the different types of pressures that exist in air and water.
• Do the drinking candle experiment to see firsthand what they learned about fire and pressure.

The best present: Year-round engaging content!

Use Newsela’s knowledge and skill-building products to create timely, engaging lessons for every holiday, event, and state mandate all year. If you’re not a Newsela customer yet, sign up for Newsela Lite and get a 45-day free trial of all our premium and differentiated content and activities to help you plan more exciting activities for Christmas and beyond.

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