Holidays from Around the World Come to North Baltimore Children

Every year for the past decade, the Village Learning Place has used the Christmas season as a time to teach children about holidays from around the world. 

The nonprofit neighborhood-run library in Charles Village provides games and crafts to provide information about Dwalli, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Navidad, St. Lucia Day, and the Emperor's Birthday.

This year was no different.

The community library provided on Tuesday a series of tables with different holiday displays, including a traditional, brightly-lit Christmas tree. Children went from table to table exploring the different cultures and earning a stamp in their "passports" for each holiday. 

Laura Grossman, a program assistant, explained the significance of oil in the celebration of Hanukkah as she helped the children decorate and fold their own origami-style dreidels.

"This event is one of the kids' favorite. They're excited about Christmas and at the end of the day they get to go home with a whole bag of crafts they've made themselves," she said.

"I'm giving this to my mom!" squealed a small girl happily coloring a musical shaker, or zawadi, as it's known in the Kwanza tradition.

The children were gleeful as they lined up to tape paper St. Lucia candles, on which they wrote a Christmas wish. Nearly every child put some variation of "happy family" on their candle. 

Liesje Gantert, executive director of VLP, was all smiles.

"It's amazing to see how much community support we have. It's what keeps us, and this event going strong year after year. [The community involvement has] become a crucial resource in the life and education for the kids in our neighborhood," she said.

In 1997, Baltimore City closed the Charles Village Branch of Enoch Pratt's free library, one of six, and the last built before his death.

The surrounding neighborhood was outraged, and though protests and lawsuits failed to keep the library open. In 2000 the power of area residents' voices convinced the city to give them access to the space, in the form of a $1 lease.

Volunteers came together to reinvent the space as The Village Learning Place, a fully circulating library and community center. Ten years later, the VLP celebrated another successful year Tuesday with its International Holiday Party, an event designed to educate local children, from pre-kindergarten through eighth grade, about seasonal festivities from around the world.

VLP has a long waitlist for its free afterschool and summer programs, but is trying to alleviate the situation with an expansion.

"We're opening four more classrooms right across the street," Gantert said. "There is so much more we want to do."

The International Holiday Party is just one of many events VLP hosts throughout the year, and not all of them are designed solely for the kids.

There are adult cultural programs and lecture series, senior citizen events that range from seminars to tea and music discussions.

In warmer months, the community garden out back is open to the public. It was planted with the help of students from Margaret Brent Elementary. Visitors are encouraged to help themselves to the "culinary garden" full of rosemary, thyme, marjoram and chive.

"Please, come by, have lunch in the garden and clip some herbs to take home for dinner," Gantert said.

As the celebration began to wind down, the children gleefully showed off their creations to one another and bursting into impromptu Jingle Bells sing-a-longs, accompanied by the rattle of their Kwanza shakers. 

"Seeing them learn something new, while having a good time doing it, makes it worth all the work. And besides, it puts everyone in the holiday spirit," Gantert said.