Summer: The Holiday Season

Summer camps celebrate holidays in their own ways, making them special and unique.

Children arrive at summer camp from all sorts of holiday traditions.  Maybe their family spent each Independence Day at the beach, or marked each summer birthday with a sack race and a few runs on the Slip-n-Slide.  Perhaps the 4th of July was noted with more solemnity.

So how do summer camps ‘do’ holidays in ways that make them feel both familiar and special, while not abandoning the values that make that summer camp unique?  As with most things, there are a variety of healthy approaches.  Summer camps recognize official holidays, unique holidays, and holidays out of season with a range of fitting styles, from aplomb to nonchalance.  

Given that it falls during the summer, many summer camps have traditions surrounding the 4th of July.  Often, there’s a balance between the silly and the serious.  To commemorate July Fourth at YMCA Camp Woodstock, director Mike Sherman said that each cabin creates ‘human fireworks’ before meals — cartwheels, leaping with outstretched limbs.  At night, “we do fireworks over the lake” — Black Pond in northeastern Connecticut — “and I tell a patriotic story about my great-grandfather, who came over poor, worked his way up, became mayor of Indianapolis, and got there by treating all people equally.”

At Camp Pondicherry, “the program director will typically put something together that has patriotic meaning in it,” said director Anne Randall.  The campers look forward to a large cake or cupcakes at dinner, followed by an evening campfire full of skits and performances.  Afterwards, the camp watches for fireworks in the distance, usually coming from small towns or other camps.  “We don’t have our own; we just share other people’s,” Anne said.

Some summer camps try to emphasize the familiar.  At Delaware OAC, director Alex Thomas said they do the kind of things folks do when they have their family barbecues”: burgers and hot dogs, red, white, and blue decorations, field games, sparklers.  In past years, the British counselors have raised their flag underneath the Stars and Stripes that day, which Alex said allows the staff to remind their campers of the significance of the holiday.

At Seeds of Peace, older campers generally write a song that represents the summer camp’s mission — understanding different cultures, respect, and tolerance — and both wake the other kids up by performing it on the morning of Independence Day and playing it as part of a parade in nearby Otisfield, Maine.  Said director Leslie Lewin, “Our camp is about neutralizing nationalism in some way, but we try to use [the holiday] as a launching pad for learning about other cultures.”

Several summer camps use July Fourth, like Seeds of Peace, as a way to be a presence in their local communities.  Camp Kingswood enters a float in the parade in Woodsville, New Hampshire (picture at right).  At Copper Cannon, the staff march in the Franconia, NH, town parade; international staff bear the flags of their home nations.  Back on Copper Cannon’s campus, the campers are reenacting the Revolutionary War Battle of Fort Ticonderoga.  Director Pete Christnacht explained, “We break the kids up into four different teams, and each is required to build a sled, designed to carry four people and an imaginary cannon.”  The teams have an hour to scrounge around camp for materials, and then they venture to a sand pit and race down it — and then, to properly re-enact the situation, they have to tow the sled back uphill.  It’s a very ‘camp’ way to remember an event: a great degree of silliness, but with a teachable moment that allows campers to understand the difficulties of battle.

For some summer camps, making a big production out of holidays just doesn’t make much sense.  Pat Haines, director of SJ Riding Camp, said that they keep celebrations low-key.  “We’re a riding camp, so we take the horse stuff pretty seriously.”  The important routine of caring for the horses doesn’t distinguish the 4th of July from the 5th of July, after all.

Chris Burke from Becket-in-the-Berkshires, said his summer camp holds a carnival that day.  “Staff come up with activities — it might be a human version of a video game, or a car wash for kids in wagons, using waterfront noodles.  There’s always a dunk tank, and a stage set up for camper/staff musical performances throughout the day.”  For visual effects, it’s hard to beat red, white, and blue icing, which every camper lathered on cupcakes to create a giant American flag of cupcakes.”

Of course, just because a holiday falls outside of the summer months, or doesn’t otherwise exist, is no reason it can’t be properly celebrated at summer camp.  At Songadeewin of Keewaydin, the girls celebrate Valentine’s Day on July 14th.  Director Ellen Flight said, “We all wear red and pink with as much flair as we can muster.  The oldest girls love playing cupids for the day — sneaking around to decorate the dining hall, delivering Valentines.”  

Wa-Klo celebrates Christmas Hannukah, a nine-day holiday complete with menorah lighting and secret Santas.  According to Susan Chenet, assistant director, it’s been a tradition for at least 25 years.  Campers decorate the camp for the Christmas party on the final night, during which the secret Santas are revealed and the staff performs “The Night Before Christmas.”  Kids decorate cookies for the counselors and carol to them, usually with a song they’ve made up.  
Creativity provides great leadership opportunities for campers — they learn to find the balance between coming up with something fun and special for the summer camp without going completely overboard.  

To learn more about how camps celebrate during the summer, get in touch with them through our Guide.