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Upper School history teacher Christine Carter has many fun Christmas traditions that she participates in every year. \u201cMy family always picks out a big tree,\u201d said Dr. Carter \u201cMy dad used to search for weeks leading up to Christmas for the best place to get a tree, and I try to live up to his high standards \u2026but I don\u2019t put that much time into the search.\u201d She also shared that her family puts lights outside their house, but \u201cit is something that Mr. Carter usually does with the kids.\u201d She enjoys watching \u201cElf,\u201d \u201cThe Grinch,\u201d with Jim Carrey and \u201cIt\u2019s a Beautiful Life,\u201d even though that one makes everyone cry. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dr. Carter said, \u201cWe always go to church on Christmas Eve, and my sister and I show up early to get good seats for our big group in the balcony.\u201d Every Christmas, she makes sure to honor her family. \u201cI love taking out old family treasures that remind me of the people in my family who have passed,\u201d said Dr. Carter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Upper School counselor and psychology teacher Ellye Millaway loves to travel with her family during Christmas. \u201cI have spent my last few Christmases in Mexico, Nashville, Asheville and New York City,\u201d said Ms. Millaway. She has some very special traditions that she enjoys for Hanukkah. \u201cWe celebrate Hanukkah for 8 nights, and everyone in our house gets a present every night. We eat latkes, the ones from Trader Joe\u2019s are the best, and play dreidel. And one of our favorite ways to celebrate is by inviting our non-Jewish neighbors and friends to come over and celebrate with us and learn more about the holiday,\u201d said Ms. Millaway. Ms. Millaway also wants to note that Hanukkah is not actually a very significant Jewish holiday, but people believe that it is because of its proximity to Christmas. She states \u201cMy favorite Jewish holiday is Passover!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Like Dr. Carter, Ms. Millaway also believes that \u201cElf\u201d is the best holiday movie. Ms. Millaway says \u201cThere are no good Hanukkah movies, and \u201cEight Crazy Nights\u201d is objectively bad, but we watch the \u201cRugrats\u201d Hanukkah episode every year.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Head of School Fred Assaf loves Christmas and likes making Christmas last a long time. Mr. Assaf says, \u201cEvery Christmas we open half the presents and then we break for a big breakfast so that the day lasts longer. We make a big breakfast, in our house that\u2019s like 20 pounds of bacon and pancakes and all that. And then we resume the opening. And then in the afternoon we usually all sneak into the Pace gym and play a sport.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When it comes to Christmas decorations, Mr. Assaf says, \u201cI am a big fan of very large blowup inflatable Christmas decorations. So I\u2019m that guy.\u201d The Assaf family usually travels during New Year\u2019s to go to college football bowl games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Class of 2024 Dean and Upper School history teacher Caitlin Terry loves fall and winter, and Thanksgiving is her favorite holiday. Mrs. Terry has a unique Christmas tradition that she adopted after going to Iceland for Christmas in 2015. Ms. Terry says \u201cWe learned about the practice of jolabokaflod, which translates to the Christmas flood of books. So, in Iceland on every Christmas Eve, you give someone a book. That\u2019s our favorite Christmas Eve tradition. It\u2019s honestly better than getting presents the next day because we know each other really, really well and we are both giant nerds.\u201d Ms. Terry also loves to start off the New Year well by hosting an afternoon open house party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Upper School Latin teacher Elizabeth Kann has great memories celebrating both Hanukkah and Christmas since she converted to Judaism. Ms. Kann\u2019s Christmas celebrations look different depending on where she is for the holiday. Ms. Kann said \u201cIf we are at home, we definitely get Chinese food and then watch a movie, like \u2018Die Hard’ or the \u2018Rudolph\u2019 claymation movie. We also like to drive around and see lights or go to the lights at the Botanical Gardens. If we are with my family in Tennessee, we do Christmasy stuff with presents, a tree, stockings and more. If we are in Baltimore with my husband\u2019s family, we always go to the lights display in Hamden. That\u2019s a pretty famous display called Miracle on 34th Street that started the same year as the movie and it is totally fun and over the top.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ms. Kann does not consider herself to be a big decorator, but she hangs up lights, some Hanukkah decorations, sets out menorahs and loves to set out a Tree of Life. She even sets out a Ruth Bader Ginsburg menorah that says \u201cI Dissent.\u201d Ms. Kann said, \u201cWe always celebrate at least one night of Hanukkah with our friends we met when we were pregnant with our oldest children and we all go to be good friends. We do latkes with them every year and it has been amazing to be so close for more than 20 years now. Otherwise, we usually light candles and give gifts at home. Pretty chill because it is usually during exams and that\u2019s a hard time to go all in! Depending on the timing, we usually go to at least one of the nights of the lighting of the big menorah in East Cobb.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
With winter break approaching, students are excited about traveling and holiday festivities, but they often forget that teachers and staff do exciting things over the holidays too. These are some of Pace faculty members’ favorite Christmas, Hanukkah and New Years traditions. Upper School history teacher Christine Carter has many funContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":430,"featured_media":352503,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["entry","author-hannah-much24paceacademy-org","post-352502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pacenews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/knightlife.paceacademy.org\/knightlynews\/files\/2023\/11\/IMG-4414-scaled.jpg?fit=1920%2C2560&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1TYqQ-1tHw","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/knightlife.paceacademy.org\/knightlynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/knightlife.paceacademy.org\/knightlynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/knightlife.paceacademy.org\/knightlynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/knightlife.paceacademy.org\/knightlynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/430"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/knightlife.paceacademy.org\/knightlynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=352502"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/knightlife.paceacademy.org\/knightlynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352502\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":352572,"href":"https:\/\/knightlife.paceacademy.org\/knightlynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352502\/revisions\/352572"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/knightlife.paceacademy.org\/knightlynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/352503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/knightlife.paceacademy.org\/knightlynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=352502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/knightlife.paceacademy.org\/knightlynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=352502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/knightlife.paceacademy.org\/knightlynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=352502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}