We hope everyone had a safe and relaxing snow day yesterday! To help get back into the academic mindset, here are five fun facts about December and the holiday season.

1. The song “Jingle Bells” is a longstanding Christmas classic, but it was originally composed in 1850 as a Thanksgiving ballad.
2. The name “December” comes from the latin word for ten, “decem,” because it was originally the tenth month of the Roman calendar.
3. There is no official English spelling for Hanukkah because there’s no equivalent for the Hebrew sounds in the English language; that’s why you’ll often see the holiday referred to with other variations of the word, such as Chanukah.
4. Candy canes were first created in Germany in the 1670s to give to children at Cologne Cathedral. The “J” shape was meant to represent both Jesus and a shepard’s crook.
5. The largest snowman ever created was built in Bethel, Maine, and was named Olympia. Olympia was over 122 feet tall and contained over 13 million pounds of snow.

As winter break approaches, Tiny Smiles Club works to ensure that everyone can partake in the holiday spirit. During AcLab today, Dec. 4, in Kristen Struckoff’s room, dozens of students gathered at the club meeting to create holiday cards for hospitalized children; at the end of the module, participants voted on the best card, and the winner received a holiday mug with marshmallows, peppermint, and hot cocoa. Club founder and sophomore Raaga Golla coordinated the competition along with her executive board.

“[Tiny Smiles Club] brings a great sense of togetherness to West. I like to emphasize that the tiniest of actions can have the biggest of impacts, and I love that even 45 minutes of AcLab [spent] making heartfelt cards can have a really big effect on another person’s life, which is especially important during the holiday season,” Golla said.

Despite a snow day and an unanticipated illness, club leaders worked hard to make the meeting happen, even partnering with Parkway West Key Club to recruit more artists for volunteer hours.

“I have been sick this whole week, but my executive board really pulled through, and we made it a team effort to have the meeting run smoothly,” Golla said. “Working with Key Club was [also] great [because] it gave [members] a large incentive to help others.”

Ho ho ho! Tis the season of holiday candy! With the gloomy weather and finals approaching, it’s easy to start feeling down, but there’s a reason to stay joyful;. holiday candy is back, with both classic and new products. Here’s our takes on some recent releases:

1. Albanese released their Jolly Gingerbread Gummies. The opaque candies are the same flavors as the normal Albanese gummy bears, but are shaped as a cute gingerbread man and colorful gumdrop squad. With 7 classic varieties, the added fun of the holiday characters makes this candy worth the purchase.
2. The Holiday Sour Patch Kids Coal are for those who didn’t make the nice list. With their black color and small round shape that resembles the fossil fuel, the sweets look intimidating. The black raspberry-flavored candy itself, however, is equivalent to a normal Sour Patch Kid: sour and sweet.
3. For the chocolate lover, Reese’s Holiday Lights are perfect. They have the same milk chocolate coating filled with sugary peanut butter, but are shaped into thicker light shapes wrapped in festive red and green.
4. Ghiradelli, among other holiday chocolates and treats, released their seasonal Peppermint Bark Squares. The peppermint flavor is mild, balanced by a layer of creamy milk chocolate. It’s good to see a brand branching out with new flavor combinations for the holidays, but beware that the smaller package only has two squares inside, a disappointment for the steep price.
5. You’re never too old for a little toy: Kinder Joy offers a fun surprise with each of their chocolates to brighten up your day, but now with a holiday figurine. In our egg, we got a little snowboarding snowman. You can hook the toys together as you collect more, creating a fun and affordable way to brighten up the season.

Earlier today, Dec. 4, in AcLab, Asian Based Celebrations Club (ABC Club) hosted a white elephant holiday gift exchange for their members. Participating members brought various gifts, from stuffed animals to snacks to a pitbull terrier poster. 

ABC Club aims to celebrate various aspects of Asian culture through their monthly meetings by exploring recent Asian holidays. This gift exchange was no different; some members brought gifts representative of Asian countries like Asian snacks or a Miffy blindbox, with blindboxes originating from Japan.

“The main purpose of ABC club is [to celebrate] the diversity in it that the members contribute to. Recently, we’ve hosted many meetings about East Asian [and] South Asian cultures, but we also wanted to address some of the other holidays that normally aren’t brought up in our typical ABC meeting,” ABC Club co-president Bethany Liao said. “It’s important for our members as a whole, regardless of what ethnicity they are, to be aware of and appreciate and even partake in some of these holidays that their culture typically wouldn’t be celebrating.”

With the holiday season, it’s fascinating to see the ways different cultures choose to celebrate and the unique stories that are worth sharing.

This Friday at 7 pm, empty parking spaces at Missouri Baptist University became a thing of the past as hundreds flowed into the Pillsbury Chapel & Dale Williams Fine Arts Center to watch Parkway West Choirs’ winter concert. The performance featured singers of all levels; middle school beginners, concert choir veterans and dedicated members of the jazz choir all joined together, deftly switching between sets of winter songs. Junior and jazz choir member Miles Jaworski reflects on the event.

“We had a field trip for half the day to go out and practice with the middle schoolers. In between [songs at the concert], a [new] choir would come down or there’d be a solo. We also had a brass quintet there that played Alvin and the Chipmunks’ ‘The Christmas Song,” Jaworski said.

This week from Dec. 8 to Dec 12., Parkway hosted the annual Holiday Cup competition where each high school competes against each other for the most amount of students to participate in the holiday dress up days. Monday was Pajama Day, Tuesday was Twin Day, Wednesday was Ugly Sweater Day, Thursday is Winter Character Day and Friday will be Spirit Day.

English teacher Michelle Kerpash went all out with her costumes. Even from across the hall, her inflated Santa costume for today’s theme, Winter Character, caught the attention of students.

“I think everybody’s melting down because it’s the end of the semester, and we need to let off some steam and do something fun. Yesterday I had glitter pants.I think we need to do something light hearted and fun to keep that community spirit going, because finals can be very stressful and overwhelming,” Kerpash said.

First performed in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1892, Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker” initially received mixed reviews. Today, however, the ballet is performed by thousands of companies and studios across the world. One such local studio, M&M Dance Academy, will perform their rendition of “The Nutcracker” this weekend on Dec. 13-14 at the Keating Theater in Kirkwood, MO. Sophomore Sophie Stricker has performed many different roles as part of the annual production, and will be performing in the role of Arabian Queen this year.

“The Nutcracker is a very traditional [show] done over the years and has a lot of very significant pieces that have helped create the dance world. We practice every day [starting with] auditions in the summer. It’s exciting, [but] I’m nervous and it’s a little scary because finals are next week,” Stricker said.

We wish the best of luck to each and every dancer partaking in Nutcracker season this year! Support your local performing arts organizations by going to see a production, and listen to the full version of “Arabian Dance.”

Shalom! Today’s Pathfinder story highlights the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah, an eight-day event that’s also known as the Festival of Lights. Many students are used to Christmas celebrations in December but there’s also a special community at West High that celebrates something different, yet equally important. Hanukkah commemorates the rededication of the Second Temple in Jerusalem and the miracle of the oil that burned for eight nights.  It will be celebrated from Dec. 14-22 this year.

“My family and I celebrate Hanukkah by doing a lot of traditions, including lighting candles each night, eating latkes and opening one present each night for the eight days of Hanukkah,” junior Cole Barton said. “I wish other people knew that Hanukkah, like all other Jewish holidays, starts at sundown, rather than sunrise.”

Like Hanukkah, many traditions and customs at West High reflect diversity and uniqueness. Noticing and learning about these celebrations highlights that the season is full of different ways to connect and celebrate.

For one month a year, Trader Joe’s trades out their customary leis and aloha shirts for puffer jackets and winter boots with the unveiling of their yearly lineup of winter-themed products. Today, we’ve ranked 7 unique picks from worst to best so you know what’s really worth a purchase this holiday season.

7. Winter Wassail Punch 

In seventh place, we have the Winter Wassail Punch, which was offered as a sample at the in-store counter. The punch left much to be desired: while it had nice notes of apple with hints of cinnamon and nutmeg, the flavor wasn’t strong enough to leave us wowed. This doesn’t mean the taste-test was a total loss, though. Warmed up with a cinnamon stick and a few slices of orange, we suspect this slightly disappointing drink could become a festive crowd-pleaser. 

6. Dark Chocolate Covered Peppermint Joe-Joes

Before tasting the Dark Chocolate Covered Peppermint Joe-Joes, we didn’t think it was possible to taste too much chocolate…now, it’s safe to say our opinion has changed. While the chocolate is rich and minty, it’s coated thickly around two cookies, also chocolate, and contains only a tiny layer of peppermint cream in the middle. This overwhelming amount of chocolate makes it hard to enjoy more than a bite of the dessert and nearly impossible to even taste the Joe-Joe underneath. Moreover, when we went to the Trader Joe’s website to link this confection, our search didn’t yield any results, making us suspect that Trader Joe realized the error of his ways after offering this experimental item.

5. Snickerdoodle Cookies 

When reviewing the Snickerdoodle Cookies, we honestly struggled to think of what to say. There was nothing exceptionally bad about them—the balance of sugar and cinnamon was pleasant, the cream of tartar added a nice sourness to each bite and the sweetness wasn’t overpowering—but there was nothing incredible about them either. If you’re making the trip to Trader Joe’s, we’d recommend you reach for another item farther down the list. One thing we did appreciate was that the snickerdoodles are a relatively health-conscious treat, with only 150 calories and 9 grams of total sugar per cookie.

4. Dark Chocolate Orange

Right in the middle of our ranking falls the Dark Chocolate Orange, a sphere of dark chocolate wrapped in orange tinfoil that one must whack against a surface to break into wedges. The chocolate is flavored naturally with orange oil and can best be semisweet, trading out the characteristic bitterness of dark chocolate for the comparable flavor introduced by the citrus. What makes the chocolate orange so enticing is the novelty of breaking it open, but the flavor is rich and not waxy in texture, leading to its classification as a Pathfinder-approved stocking stuffer.

3. Scandinavian Tidings 

The Scandinavian Tidings gummies were fun, flavorful, and festive; everything you’d expect of the perfect holiday treat. The dense, win-gum-esque candies come in berry, green apple and sparkling grape, which seem to be lesser known flavors on the candy scene. The only bone we have to pick with these treats is their nutrition label, which can be read above. As finals finally wrap up, consider sending some good tidings your friends’ way, also wrapped up in a 14-ounce bag.

2. Danish Gingerbread Snaps

Trader Joe’s redeemed themselves from every subpar item on this list with their Danish Gingerbread Snaps. The cookies are simple, light and airy, with traces of cinnamon and even ground pepper. Just like the Scandinavian Tidings gummies, the snaps come in 5 unique shapes. The only thing keeping these snaps from the No. 1 spot is that we wished we could taste a bit more of the spices.

1. Peppermint Brookie

We could have stood up and applauded after our first bite of this brookie. Resting on a layer of milk chocolate brownie is a layer of peppermint sugar cookie dough sprinkled with white peppermint chips. The flavor of the mint perfectly balances out the decadent chocolate base,  creating an irresistible take on a classic dessert. We especially enjoyed the blend of textures in this treat. The chewy and rich brownie paired with the crunch of crystallized sugar take the Peppermint Brookie straight to the first spot on this list.