As 2025 winds down, Orange County residents are whipping out lights, candleholders and other decorations to celebrate the winter holidays of Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa.
The December holidays marks a time of illumination in OC around the shortest day of the year as families set up Christmas lights outside their homes, light menorahs for Hanukkah and kinaras for Kwanzaa.
On the last day of the month, families across the world will also ring in the new year watching firework shows in major cities across the globe and counting down to 2026 – with some couples kicking off the year with a kiss when the clock strikes midnight.
This year, the lights come after months of widespread deportation sweeps that have upended families and have left some people afraid to go to work or to the grocery store for fear of being detained.
It also comes as OC Social Services Agency, CalOptima and food bank leaders warn of drastic cuts and changes to government food assistance and health insurance programs that will impact hundreds of thousands of local residents.
[Read: OC’s Poorest Brace For Cuts to Food Stamps and Health Insurance This Thanksgiving]
Christmas & The Birth of Jesus Christ
Off of University Ave and Hanceford Road in Ladera Ranch right outside of Mission Viejo, Calif., is a small community that has created an interactive Christmas light display for pedestrians. Visitors are guided through the neighborhood with small signs to keep them engaged. Credit: FASHION CASTILLO, Voice of OC
Many families are getting ready to celebrate Christmas on Dec. 25 – when most Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ.
“For us, Christmas is when Jesus – who we believe to be God – took flesh and became like us in every way but sin out of love for us to redeem us, to save us and to open to us the promise of again being in heaven,” said Tim Freyer, Auxiliary Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange, in a Tuesday phone interview.
As part of the celebration, many families hang Christmas lights and religious decorations inside and outside their home and put up a Christmas tree where they’ll gather the night before or Christmas morning to open up presents.
Freyer said many people celebrate by going to church and giving thanks to God, share a meal together and give gifts. He also said that the decorative lights have a symbolic meaning of hope.
“We believe that Jesus is the light of the world,” Freyer said. “So we hope to radiate his light which would be a light of love, of comfort, of healing, of peace.”
There has been a host of tree lighting ceremonies across Orange County already including in Irvine, Laguna Beach, San Juan Capistrano and Dana Point with one scheduled tomorrow at Costa Mesa City Hall at 5 p.m.
Freyer said a lot of people continue to hope and pray for peace this Christmas season.
“We believe Jesus Christ is the prince of peace so it’s fitting to ask him to fill our hearts and our world with peace,” he said.
Freyer also said people are praying for the many families impacted by the widespread deportation sweeps and those afraid to go out in public.
“We continue to pray and hope and work towards comprehensive immigration reform that would fix the system that people on the left and the right all recognize needs some repair work,” he said.
Hanukkah – A Festival of Lights
The menorah lighting display inside Fashion Island is in partnership with the Chabad Center for Jewish Life in Newport Beach. Credit: OMAR SANCHEZ, Voice of OC
Jewish families across Orange County will begin celebrating the eight nights of Hanukkah this weekend by lighting a candle each night on their menorah – a multi-branched candle holder.
The lighting of the menorah commemorates the story of the Maccabees, a Jewish family who stood up against the oppression of the Seleucids – successors of Alexander the Great – and their ban on Judaism in Jerusalem thousands of years ago.
Stephen Einstein, president of OC Board of Rabbis and founding Rabbi Emeritus Congregation B’nai Tzedek in Fountain Valley, said the Jewish people’s revolt against the Seleucids was one of the first wars fought for religious freedom.
“This happened before the time of Jesus. Had these folks not revolted and insisted on following our own religion, we probably then would not have either Christianity or Islam today, because both of those faith communities grew out of the Jewish experience.” Einstein said in a Monday phone interview.
“So it’s amazing what a lasting difference this relatively small band of people made on, essentially, the history of the world.”
A booth at Temple Beth David’s Hanukkah festival in Westminster on Sunday, Dec. 3, 2023. Credit: CARISSA NELSON, Voice of OC
The lighting of the menorah is symbolic of what happened after the revolt – a legend not included in the Books of Maccabees, accounts detailing the revolt that are not in the Hebrew bible – the Tanakh.
According to the Talmud, one of Judaism’s central texts, the Jewish people had only enough oil to light a candle for one night when they took back the Second Temple of Jerusalem and defeated the Seleucids – a Greek-Syrian dynasty that ruled West Asia.
The candle, however, miraculously burned for eight nights.
Einstein said Hanukkah is about creating light in a time of darkness and for many, the deportation raids mark a dark time in the nation – noting that people across the county are being detained.
“This is a very dark time for so many people right now,” Einstein said.
“Families are fearful, and the Jewish community, which has gone through such an experience like this ourselves, more than once, feels this very deeply and really prays for all those who are at this moment are essentially under attack because of where they had been born or how dark their skin may be.”
For many Jewish families, Hanukkah is a minor holiday unlike Passover and Yom Kippur but it has gained popularity for its proximity to Christmas.
“Because of the time of year when it falls and because other people at the season are having big holiday celebrations, Hanukkah has become a much more widely observed and better known holiday,” Einstein said.
Several congregations across Orange County will host menorah lighting ceremonies and Hanukkah celebrations over the course of the next week with events in Huntington Beach, Orange, San Clemente, Irvine, Newport Beach, Laguna Beach, Yorba Linda and more.
Kwanzaa – Practicing The Seven Principles
Families may enjoy crafts and other activities that encourage unity, reflecting a major principle of Kwanzaa. This craft station is set up at Pretend City in Irvine. Credit: CRYSTAL HENRIQUEZ, Voice of OC
A day after Christmas, some families will celebrate Kwanzaa – a weeklong celebration of African American and Pan-African culture and community that ends on the first day of the new year.
Kwanzaa is not a traditional African celebration, but a relatively new celebration inspired in part by African harvest festivals and created by Maulana Karenga, chair of the Africana Studies Department at California State University, Long Beach in 1966 during the Civil Rights movement.
Karenga said in his annual founder’s Kwanzaa message last year that times are difficult and uncertain.
“There is a pervasive sense of anxiety, apprehension and uncertainty about the future, about how we continue to go forward, meet the coming storm, and overcome and disperse the dark- ness that threatens to envelop us,” he wrote in his annual founder’s message last December.
“But our very history and humanity tell us we must defy the darkness that seeks to dispirit and diminish us with our radical refusal to be defeated in any way.”
On Friday, Cal State Fullerton’s Institute of Black Intellectual Innovation will be hosting their fifth annual Kwanzaa brunch at the University’s student union from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.
The word Kwanzaa comes from the Swahili word “matunda ya kwanza” which translates to the first fruits of harvest.
Over the course of the weeklong celebration, families will also light a Kinara – a candleholder that holds three green candles representing the future, three red candles representing the past and one black candle representing Black unity.
Each also represents a principle of Kwanzaa including unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity and faith.
Karenga said to drive away the darkness, people must “lift up the light that lasts” by practicing the seven principles.
“Grounded in these principles and practices,” he wrote. “We can build a new future; weather the worst of winters; disperse and drive away darkness; and lift up the light that lasts of shared and inclusive good in the world.”
Hosam Elattar is a Voice of OC reporter and corps member with Report for America, a GroundTruth initiative. Contact him at helattar@voiceofoc.org or on Twitter @ElattarHosam.
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