Writing About Holidays and Festivals to Someone Who Doesn't Celebrate Them

"We had a lovely Sinterklaas, I got the chocolate letter I wanted."

To someone in the Netherlands, that sentence is complete and slightly moving. To almost anyone else, it raises at least four questions: who is Sinterklaas, why is chocolate shaped like a letter, how do you want a particular one, and is this Christmas or not?

Holidays are where letters get most interesting, and where people most often write as if the reader already knows everything. Here is how to tell someone about your festivals, and ask about theirs.

Explaining your own holidays without assuming anything

The trap is that holidays feel universal from the inside. It is genuinely hard to see which parts need explaining.

A useful test: imagine reading your paragraph aloud to someone who has never been to your country. Every name, food and ritual they would stop you to ask about needs a few words of context.

Compare:

"Diwali was great, we did the usual and the whole street was lit up."

with:

"Diwali was last week. It is often called the festival of lights — in our family we clean the whole house beforehand, put small clay oil lamps called diyas along the windows, and visit relatives with boxes of sweets. My aunt makes a sweet called ladoo, which is a ball of flour, sugar and ghee, and I eat far too many every year."

The second version is longer, but your pen pal can actually reply to it.

Some practical rules:

• Explain what you do, not what everyone does. "In our family" and "where I live" are honest qualifiers. Most holidays vary enormously between regions, families and generations, and your pen pal's other friends from your country may describe it quite differently.
• Pick two or three details. A complete account is an encyclopedia entry. One meal, one ritual and one feeling is a letter.
• Include the unglamorous bits. The arguments over whose house to go to, the cousin who always falls asleep.
• Mention what it means to you personally. Is it religious for you, cultural, a family obligation, the one week everyone is in the same room? Your pen pal cannot guess, and the answer often tells them more than the description.

Food and family: the parts that travel best

If you only describe one thing, describe the food. It is concrete, it is sensory, and nearly everyone has a comparison to offer back.

Say what it tastes like and who makes it. "It is a kind of bread with dried fruit inside, a bit like a very heavy cake. My grandmother makes it and nobody else is allowed to, even though my mother's is honestly better." That sentence contains a recipe, a family hierarchy and a small secret.

Family details work the same way: who is at the table, who cooks, who washes up, who gives presents to whom. That tells someone how a household works, which most guidebooks cannot. For more on this kind of everyday detail, the guide to learning about a country through your pen pal is a good companion.

Religious holidays, handled with care

Many of the biggest festivals in the world are religious, and that calls for a little extra thought on both sides.

When writing about your own, you do not need to hide the religious meaning or apologise for it, and you also do not need to explain your beliefs in full. A sentence such as "For us it is a religious holiday — we go to the mosque in the morning — but it is also the biggest family day of the year" gives your pen pal the outline without asking them to engage with theology unless they want to.

When asking about theirs, a few habits help:

• Do not assume they observe it just because it is the main holiday in their country. Plenty of people in largely Christian countries are not religious; plenty of people celebrate a festival culturally without believing in it; plenty of people belong to a minority faith in their country. Ask open questions: "Do you celebrate anything around this time of year?"
• Ask about experience, not doctrine. "What does the day actually look like in your house?" is easy and warm. "Why do you believe that?" is a different conversation, and usually not one for an early letter.
• Learn the right greeting, and use it once. Wishing someone "Eid Mubarak", "Happy Hanukkah" or "Happy Diwali" at the right time is a kind gesture. Getting a detail slightly wrong is forgivable; making a joke about a fast or a ritual is not a good idea until you know each other well.
• Expect fasting and observance to vary. During Ramadan, for example, practice differs between people and families, and someone who is fasting may simply be tired and write less. That is not a sign of lost interest.

If a conversation does drift towards belief or politics, the difficult topics guide covers how to keep it friendly.

Seasons are not the same everywhere

A small thing that catches people out every year: if your pen pal is in the other hemisphere, their seasons are the reverse of yours.

Christmas in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa or much of South America falls in summer. A December letter full of snow, early darkness and woolly jumpers will be read by someone at the beach, possibly mid-barbecue. Equally, someone in Europe may be surprised to learn that their Chilean pen pal's long summer holidays fall over Christmas and New Year.

This is a gift rather than a problem. "What does a hot Christmas actually look like?" is a far better question than "what do you do at Christmas?" Just do not open with "I hope you're staying warm!" before checking.

Timing a letter to arrive for their holiday

If you are sending something by post, the timing takes a little planning. Some tips:

• Many holidays move. Festivals that follow a lunar or lunisolar calendar — Eid, Diwali, Lunar New Year, Passover and Easter among them — fall on different dates in the Gregorian calendar each year. Check the date for the current year, and if you are unsure, ask your pen pal well in advance.
• International post can be slow, especially in December. Delivery times vary a great deal by country and season, so check your national post office's guidance on last posting dates. Sending early and writing "do not open until…" on the envelope solves most problems. The international mail guide has more on this.
• Only post things once you have exchanged addresses safely. Holidays are a lovely reason to send a card, but not a reason to share a home address before you trust someone. A message on the site, timed to arrive on the day, works perfectly well — and if you use airmail mode, remember it adds a delay, so send it a day early.

"I looked it up and I think today is the first day of Lunar New Year where you are — I hope your family's dinner is as noisy as you described last year. Which zodiac animal is it this time, and is it a good one for you?" Three sentences, and it proves you remembered.

Asking for the reverse

The best holiday exchanges are two-sided. After you have described your own, ask about theirs with something specific:

• "Is there a holiday where you live that people outside your country have never heard of?"
• "What is a holiday food you secretly do not like?"
• "Which festival did you love most as a child, and has that changed?"

A year later, you may be the only person in your country who knows exactly when their family's big day is — and a letter that arrives on time says more than any present.

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