By Arden Berry | Staff Writer
The Baylor Modern Languages and Cultures department will bring caroling groups from 11 different languages to unite Christmas on Fifth Street in global harmony as part of its Holiday Carols from Around the World tradition.
According to the schedule of events, the carolers will perform from 6:05–7:05 p.m. Dec. 4 on the main stage at Fountain Mall.
Yoshiko Gaines, senior lecturer in Japanese, said she got together with a group to sing Japanese Christmas carols in front of the Christmas tree in the SUB her first year teaching at Baylor.
“Before I came to Baylor, I was teaching Japanese and I did Christmas caroling with my students,” Gaines said. “When I started here, it’s like, you know, this is a Christian school — I should be able to do this.”
As she walked back to her office later, she passed by the Christmas on Fifth Street events.
“And I’m like, ‘Why can we not do this on Christmas on Fifth?’” Gaines said. “So following year, I reached out to Student Activities and they graciously said, ‘Oh, we’d like to have some kind of academic element.’”
So Gaines started the Holiday Carols Around the World as a Christmas on Fifth Street tradition in 2010.
Gaines said the Baylor and Beyond Living Learning Community is also involved in the tradition. She said the LLC helps with T-shirt designs, emceeing and other parts of running the event.
“Students learning a language can learn carols in their chosen language,” the Baylor and Beyond LLC website reads. “Others can assist with volunteering to assist with crowd control and hold information signs. A truly global event!”
Gaines said each group will sing “Silent Night” in their language. The remaining songs differ by language, with some singing traditional holiday songs in their language’s culture and others singing globally popular carols in their language.
“For Japanese, we’ll sing one verse of ‘Silent Night’ between a Japanese song, traditional children’s song about snow … and then we’ll do the ‘Silent Night,’ one verse, and then we’ll sing ‘Jingle Bells’ in Japanese,” Gaines said.
Between songs, Gaines said they show Bible verses in the languages they sing in.
“This year, I think people can access the song titles and those Bible verses through the QR code that they provide on the event page,” Gaines said. “So I think we’re happy about being able to share that Bible verse in different languages.”
Gaines said the organizing team consists of herself, Rosalie Barrera, senior lecturer in Spanish; Holly Shi, senior lecturer in Chinese; and Leia Duncan, Baylor and Beyond LLC program director. Each language group has faculty leaders as well.
“We’ve done this so many years, so it has gotten pretty much automatic,” Gaines said. “The leadership team communicates in email and everybody has a task, and then they just do it.”
Gaines said she is confident the carolers will be ready for Christmas on Fifth Street.
“There are a lot of language professors who are talented musicians too, so every year we have plenty of live instruments and stuff, and then we also have talented students,” Gaines said. “And some groups have dance moves.”
Mililani, Hawaii, senior Elliott Fujinami said he has participated since he started Japanese language courses his sophomore year.
“They invited me to sing, but then also … because I can play the violin, they asked me if I wanted to help play the violin while they sing carols in Japanese,” Fujinami said. “So it was a really nice experience for the first time for me because I got to participate on stage.”
Fujinami said Holiday Carols from Around the World has been an awesome experience and helps him feel more connected to his culture.
“Besides just playing the violin, too, I also like helping out with the singing, trying to be as loud as possible to really represent my culture,” Fujinami said. “I really just enjoy singing some of our own culture’s carols, but also like singing popular carols in Japanese as well.”
