Celebrating Our Holidays, Celebrating Diversity

By Lt. Governor Joe Maxwell

	The current season is a time when many throughout Missouri celebrate various holidays, each through their own family and cultural traditions.  This festive season has already witnessed the celebration of Hanukkah and the feasting at the conclusion of Ramadan in Missouri.  Our holiday season will continue through the celebration of Christmas, Kwanzaa, and the New Year.  I am personally looking forward to the opportunity to share the Christmas holiday with my extended family, as we will be celebrating this year in my home.  We will all have the opportunity to see a new year begin, which I hope will have its own surprises and joys for everyone throughout Missouri.  

	Although Missourians may each celebrate this season and others throughout the year differently, these differences symbolize the diversity that strengthens our great state.  The millions of citizens that call Missouri home each have their own familial and cultural backgrounds, each formulating a crucial piece that helps to constitute our cultural mosaic.  This is a true image of the people of Missouri; our differences in culture, ethnicity, race, religion, and region, yet also our shared lives as Missourians. The picture that this mosaic creates paints images of their lives from our rural family farms to our bustling urban centers.  I am proud of the vast cultural diversity that makes Missouri, what it is today: your home, my home, all of our homes.

	It is important to not only be proud of our cultural heritage and diversity, but promote and embrace its existence as well.  Recently my office launched a new Kid’s Page for my Web site, which included, as a major feature, a cultural tour of Missouri.  This spans a great volume of history from the lives of Native American tribes before European settlement by the French at Ste. Genevieve, to the history made during our own lives.  Currently the tour offers information on cultural groups and their influences throughout Missouri, including African Americans, the Amish, Asian Americans, the French, Germans, and Native Americans. It is my hope that this tour will continue to expand, enabling us to further demonstrate the great diversity of our state.

	It is important that our children have the opportunity to realize the diversity and cultural history that exists within Missouri, and this tour hopes to provide them with the initial glimpses that will lead them on to further discovery.  The Kid’s Page can be accessed at http://www.oa.state.mo.us/ltgov/kidspage/index.html or through the link on official homepage of the lieutenant governor at http://www.ltgov.state.mo.us/homepg.htm.      
As we each experience our moments of joy and blessing throughout this holiday season, it is wonderful to know that we are sharing these with millions of our other fellow Missourians.  From Weihnachtstrassrasse, a Christmas event filled with German traditions described on the cultural tour, to the events within your own household, our traditions are a reflection of the diversity of Missouri.  I wish everyone continued blessings and happiness throughout our holiday season and into the new year.