Holidays Around the World

Let's celebrate a world of holidays!

As the ‘80s song goes, there’s a party goin’ on right here.

But at the end of the year, parties are everywhere you look around the world. From Christmas and Kwanzaa to Boxing Day and Yuletide, celebrations abound in the month of December and for New Year’s.

Here at The Behavior Exchange, we absolutely love the holidays because they’re social occasions and mean lots of fun with family and friends. When nights are longer and sunshine is scarce, the winter holiday season brings much needed light to our lives and warmth to our hearts.

So let’s celebrate with the world and dream of a new year filled with good cheer for those near and far!

How many of these winter holidays do you know?

Let’s start with the obvious one:

Christmas

Christmas is celebrated around the world as a Christian holiday, commemorating the birth of Jesus Christ. It’s also a secular holiday where Santa Claus (aka Kriss Kringle) delivers toys to good boys and girls around the globe. Because of that, he also goes by:

  • Sinterklass in the Netherlands
  • Der Weihnachtsmann in Germany
  • Père Noël in France
  • Dedt Moroz in Russia
  • Noel Baba in Turkey
  • Father Christmas in England
  • Babbo Natale and La Befana in Italy
  • Święty Mikołaj in Poland
  • サンタさんor Santa-san in Japan
  • Shaka Santa in Hawaii

Hanukkah

Hannukkah is a Jewish holiday commemorating the miracle of a small amount of oil lasting for eight nights, keeping a menorah lit in the temple after it was reclaimed from invaders during an ancient battle. During the eight days of Hanukkah, families give gifts, play games, and enjoy special foods.

Kwanzaa

Kwanzaa is a week long celebration of African community and culture. Children are honored during the holiday with gifts and encouraged to take important roles in the celebrations based on the seven principles of unity, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, self-determination, purpose, creativity, and faith.  

Chinese New Year

Chinese New Year starts on the second new moon after the winter solstice, when we experience the longest night of the year. It’s a celebration that happens in many places around the globe. In China, the two-week holiday is marked by impressive fireworks, lion dances, family dinners at home, and gifts of money in red envelopes given to children for good luck.

St. Lucia’s Day

St. Lucia’s Day in Sweden is on December 13. It’s part of their Christmas season where the oldest girl in each family is celebrated. They dress up in white and wear a crown of candles, representing an early Christian saint of the same name. Boys join in by wearing white and singing in parades.

Boxing Day

Boxing Day takes place on December 26. The holiday is said to have originated in England when the wealthy gave boxes of gifts and money to staff to reward them for their service throughout the year. Today, it’s celebrated in multiple countries and is marked by sales and shopping. In Australia and New Zealand, it’s also known for big sporting events.

Yule or Yuletide

Yule is a historical Germanic festival with pagan roots that’s associated with Odin and the Wild Hunt. Nowadays, people celebrate Yule like Christmas with gifts and family gatherings. Burning the Yule log comes from this tradition.

Omisoka

Omisoka is a Japanese festival on the last day of the year. It’s a unique celebration marked by activities for preparing for the new year, like purifying your home by removing clutter and cleaning. Families also gather for giant feasts with traditional foods, and bells ring from temples at midnight as a spiritual event.

Whatever your holiday traditions are, the fun doesn’t have to end! Contact us today to learn how our autism experts can help your child and family reach their full, meaningful potential through a playful approach to ABA therapy. The results will have you celebrating!

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Ashvina attended University of Bombay and graduated with a Bachelors of Commerce. She got her Montessori Diploma in 1985 and taught ever since. Ashvina came to TBE in January of 2016 as Admin Assistant. During the years she got the opportunity to learn and work in different departments such as HR, Finance, Office Manager and Executive Assistant. Last summer TBE bought billing in house and her current focus area is Revenue Cycle Management. She is detail oriented and enjoys working with people. Ashvina volunteers to deliver meals to seniors and local shelters on the weekend. She loves to spend time with her family and grandkids. Ashvina loves her job because she enjoys hearing different points of view, and she feels her contributions help fuel the direction of our company.

Working with children comes naturally to Angela. Her mom was a special education teacher for 30 years and often had Angela join her for Take Your Child to Work Day. And in high school, Angela spent every summer as the nanny for a little boy with an autism spectrum disorder. It was this experience where her passion for working with children with autism started to blossom.

From there, she went on to graduate from Oklahoma State University with a Bachelor of Science in Human Development and Family Sciences. She learned about Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) in a non-normative development class and from that moment knew that ABA would be her life’s work.

Angela moved to the DFW area shortly after and began working at The Behavior Exchange as a therapist. She worked on her Master’s in Behavior Analysis at the same time. A year after graduating, she earned certification as a Board Certified Behavior Analyst.

Now, as a Clinical Director at The Behavior Exchange, she brings a life-long passion to her work, holding a special place in her heart for children with limited language skills and working closely with families to develop healthy sleep habits.

Danielle’s passion for working with families is deeply personal and from the heart. Her younger brother has an autism spectrum disorder, and through their journey as a family, she found her purpose in life as an advocate for individuals with special needs.

After graduating from the University of North Texas with a degree in Human Development and Family Studies, Danielle began volunteering at The Behavior Exchange. She saw passionate therapists, meaningful change for clients, and families with hope for the future. After a summer of volunteering, she officially joined the team as Director of Admissions and found her home with The Behavior Exchange family.

With her extensive experience working as a client advocate with insurance providers, Danielle perseveres to help individuals of all ages and abilities receive the services they need to reach their full potential. She feels truly honored by each and every family who entrusts The Behavior Exchange to be part of their journey and is committed to the organization’s core values, mission, and goal of being a beacon of hope for the community.

Adam has always had a passion for helping individuals of all ages thrive and reach their full potential. He’s also an enthusiastic musician, songwriter, leader, and devoted family man, who has been helping children and team members grow with The Behavior Exchange since 2010.

Prior to joining the team at The Behavior Exchange, Adam was a mortgage loan consultant and grad student, pursuing his master’s degree in Education at the University of North Texas. He graduated in 2013 and also earned a graduate academic certificate in Autism Intervention. The following year, after years as a Behavior Therapist and seeing first-hand the power of ABA and the meaningful impact it can have on children and their families, Adam became a Board Certified Behavior Analyst. He then commenced from the Stagen Leadership Academy after completing the Integral Leadership Program (ILP), a 52-week practice-based program designed to develop executives serious about transforming themselves, their teams, and their organizations.

Adam is truly grateful to be a part of a dynamic, inspiring and compassionate team, and he’s dedicated to bettering the lives of all children and their families through the delivery of the highest quality of ABA services, while supporting the amazing team at The Behavior Exchange.

Soraya is from South Africa and moved to Texas in 1996. She graduated from The University of Texas and pursued a career, at that time, in Education. Soraya taught at a Montessori school for a few years and then took on a leadership role.

During her time in the education system, Soraya realized her passion was to assist children with special needs. So she joined The Behavior Exchange as a therapist, transitioned into a supervisory role in 2017, and a year and a half later, was promoted to Clinical Operations Manager.

She quickly learned the ins and outs of ABA operations and scheduling and successfully collaborates across departments to ensure The Behavior Exchange continues to provide quality services to clients and their families. She’s thankful to be part of such an amazing organization and excited to see what the future holds.

You could say Walter’s career started when he spent hours as a young child drawing superheroes and coloring maps. This passion, along with extraordinary swimming skills, landed him a full swimming scholarship at Texas Christian University, where he graduated in 1997 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Communication Graphics.

During the next 13 years, his design and art direction skills, conceptual-thinking abilities, and marketing-savvy know-how were honed at a few prestigious advertising and marketing agencies around the Dallas area. In the mid 2000s, he helped his wife Tammy Cline-Soza (founder and CEO of The Behavior Exchange) create a unique and concise brand for her new business. From logos and websites to uniforms, brand voice and visuals, Walter has been the main creative force for all things The Behavior Exchange.

Aside from giving birth to The Behavior Exchange brand, Walter is helping Tammy raise two amazing, beautiful children, River and Sierra. In his spare time (the two minutes he’s got per week), you can find Walter illustrating iconic landmarks of Dallas and Texas or looking around for this next open-water swim. Once he gets back in shape.

After 20 years of building The Behavior Exchange, literally from the ground up,
Tammy couldn’t be more proud of the team, culture, and organization that it has become.

As a family helping families, The Behavior Exchanges looks for opportunities that will make the biggest impact and produce life-changing outcomes – for clients, families, and even for team members. Tammy believes that if a team, a family, a community takes care of each other, the possibilities are endless and the relationships built along the way can make life more enriching and challenges easier to navigate. You could say her goal has been to build a kind of utopia full of support, love, and expertise that brings the best services possible to the community and ensures more families have access to those services.

Tammy and her family have dedicated their lives to the mission of The Behavior Exchange and continue to grow, learn, cultivate, challenge, support, and create better models for success. To that end, she is committed to her own leadership development and actively participates in advanced training, mentoring, and deep self-exploration on how to live out her purpose to love and support her family and help others reach their full potential. She takes her position very seriously and tries to serve as a channel for what the universe wants to come to fruition.

She also loves travel, gardening, being creative, MUSIC!, tennis, yoga, meditation, journaling, reading, being in nature, adventures, and more than anything, spending time with her husband Walter and their two beautiful children, River and Sierra.