Festively decorated city streets and retail stores packed with shoppers herald the approach of Christmas. But for many residents of Cambridge, Christmas isn't the main attraction of the holiday season.
As one of many groups in the city gathering to commemorate important dates this month besides the 25th, members of the Harvard Buddhist Community met on Dec. 6 to observe Bodhi Day, marking the moment when Buddha experienced enlightenment.
December is replete with celebrations of light, noted Harvard's Buddhist chaplain, Lama Migmar, who added that in his native Tibet, homes and temples are illuminated with candles at this time of year in celebration of a founding lama of Tibetan Buddhism.
"Christmas is such a popular holiday, but at the same time Christmas has a spiritual significance, and it reminds us about the offering of light," he said, and cited Diwali, a Hindu festival, and Hanukkah as other examples of religious celebrations in which light plays a central role.
"I'm not surprised Cambridge is having all these celebrations," said Colette Phillips, creator of a Boston-area multicultural resource guide called "Kaleidoscope." Noting the large number of international college students, Phillips compared Cambridge to a "multicultural salad bowl . . . that has always been a mecca that welcomes diverse people."
Last weekend, under the blue-and-white lights in Harvard Square and in front of a 4-foot-tall neon menorah, a line of people waited in the biting cold for their share of holiday fare from the "Everyone Loves Latkes Party."
The event, a first for the Harvard Square Business Association, was inspired by the popularity of the special Hanukkah menu offered at the Upstairs on the Square restaurant.
"We always do so many holiday events, but not many oriented towards our Jewish friends," said Robin Lapidus, who coordinates events and promotions for the association. "And everyone does love latkes."
Three restaurants, Upstairs among them, donated 500 latkes and served them with applesauce infused with rosemary, or made with caramel and creme fraiche. More than 300 people lined up to sample the pancakes, with many returning for seconds and thirds.
Boston residents Isaak and Raisa Zis, who emigrated from Ukraine seven years ago, shivered as they ate their latkes, but declared them to be "very good." The day before, the couple had attended a Hanukkah brunch at the Brookline Senior Center, where Isaak, 80, is a member of the choir. While she had seen this event advertised online, Raisa, 73, said she hadn't been able to find many other Hanukkah-related festivities in the Boston area.
Given its reception, the Everyone Loves Latkes Party will become an annual event, Lapidus predicted, adding that she hopes to arrange for a klezmer band next year.
While hardy souls were lining up in Harvard Square for potato pancakes, another crowd was gathered in the auditorium of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. School for the 34th Kwanzaa Family Celebration.
De Ama Battle, founder of the annual event and the Cambridge-based Art of Black Dance Ensemble, opened the celebration by emphasizing the importance of history.
"For 30 years, we have been playing our drums, singing our songs, and teaching our community what makes us a universal people," she reminded the gathering.
In the school lobby, Joel Mackall had arranged artifacts from his Mobile Museum of Black History on a table, and his dioramas of plantation life attracted the attention of Wen Yong Chen and Chen's three sons, ages 8, 10, and 14. They listened with rapt attention as Mackall explained the meaning of the miniature slave ships, the replicas of sugar cane and metal ore, and the life-sized branding iron in his display.
Battle invited members of the audience to take part in the Kwanzaa ceremony by lighting the distinctive row of red, black, and green candles set in the kinara at the front of the room. Dancers from the Roxbury Center for Performing Arts then shimmied and stomped their way through three dance numbers, and a dozen students from the King School and the Amigos School pounded through a West African drum performance and formed a conga line that snaked its way around the auditorium.
While Kwanzaa is celebrated between Dec. 26 and Jan. 1 every year, the variations between lunar and Gregorian calendars mean that many Muslims and Buddhists in Cambridge will observe their own days of religious significance in the week before Christmas.
Eid al-Adha, a four-day Muslim commemoration of Ibrahim's willingness to sacrifice his son in accordance with the will of Allah, falls on Wednesday. Bilal Kaleem, the executive director of the Boston chapter of the Muslim American Society, said this concurrence is fairly unusual. "Eid is based on the lunar calendar; it shifts 11 days each year. Basically, every 33 years or so, it comes around in December."
Muslims from Cambridge and across Greater Boston will mark the occasion by donating food to charities and by gathering at the Bayside Exposition Center, which was rented to accommodate the expected crowd of 10,000 people.
In the holiday season, Kaleem said, "regardless of whether they celebrate the religious aspect of it, most Muslims will still have holidays, because of work and school, so everyone kind of goes into holiday mode."
Venerable Man Ching, an abbess at the Cambridge-based Greater Boston Buddhist Cultural Center, echoed this sentiment, noting that some members celebrate Christmas in addition to Buddhist holy days.
On Dec. 23, the center will mark the birthday of Amitabha Buddha, a principal figure in the Pure Land sect of Buddhism, with an all-day event that includes chanting, incense offerings, and a vegetarian lunch.
Despite differences in dates and in religion, the greater spiritual significance of Amitabha's birthday resonates with the many other days of festivity in December, Ching said: "We wish to pray for well-being for the family and peace in the world."
