CBS News
Holiday hopes, changing traditions — People share what means the most this holiday season and for 2024
Bethlehem’s public Christmas events for 2023 are canceled.
The birthplace of Jesus dimmed is perhaps a symbol. The message from local officials: There’s less to celebrate this year.
People of a variety of backgrounds and across faith traditions who spoke with CBS News about the holidays shared the many different ways they observe the holiday season. They all reflected on a few themes: unity, family, faith and hope, even as many noted conflict and issues causing deep divisions in the U.S. and across the globe that are casting a cloud over the normally joyful season.
Renan Marinho, a pastor who most recently preached in Madison, Wisconsin, is focused on taking faith into 2024 as he prepares for Christmas celebrations at his new nondenominational Christian church in Florida.
“This holiday season, first of all, is having the manifestation of celebrating Jesus’ birth,” Marinho said.
“But the biggest reflection actually starts to happen when you go into New Year’s Eve, into the New Year — because this is the moment where Christians get into a sense of being able to bring into the new season God with them in their side.”
“Every aspect of my life this holiday is different,” said Shai Mizrahi Nessim. The 26-year-old artist wore a metal decal around her neck for this interview with “bring them back home” edged onto it.
“We never appreciated so much having Hanukkah, so we can have the opportunity to long for miracles to have our hostages back home.”
Nessim is keeping three things in mind during the holiday season: honoring her religion, creating unity and leading with empathy.
“It’s something that maybe I’m going to have it more present than always because we never know what people are going through. This has been a very rough year for everybody,” Nessim said.
“The Jewish Panamanian community, we stand strong with Israel, we stand strong with the IDF. We stand strong with all the families that are mourning around the world, and of innocent civilians, Palestinians too.”
On this global holiday, Ruben Garcia, draws parallels to the Nativity story, alluding to Mary and Joseph’s plight to find shelter before Jesus’ birth.
Now 75, Garcia, the director of Annunciation House, in El Paso, Texas, has helped immigrants since 1978.
“This time of Christmas, of the New Year, for them, it is an acknowledgment that God has allowed them to reach the border to arrive at the United States,” Garcia said.
Annunciation House will continue to arrange some rarities on Christmas for people crossing the border in search of a brighter future: A meal with chicken, gifts for the children and blankets for the adults.
“You can’t imagine how special that is for refugees who, as they cross through Mexico, oftentimes slept on the ground with literally nothing to cover themselves,” Garcia said.
“It can be very, very moving to receive a gift.”
Roza Tawil, a lawyer with roots in Chicago, is one of many who put gifts in stark perspective this year.
“The people in Gaza are gonna tell you, ‘My wish list is water,'” Tawil said. “My wish list is antibiotics, my wish list is food because they’re starving.”
Tawil, whose family is Palestinian and lives in the West Bank, says she feels like she lost a tooth – a hollow void she can’t stop rubbing her tongue over.
The unfathomable loss of property, life, memories — “It’s just, it’s so completely dystopian,” Tawil said.
“When you can’t see yourself in that person anymore, because their tragedy is just so extreme. It’s beyond recognition to you, you start to think of it as fiction almost, and you no longer resonate with them.”
Tawil’s family in the West Bank is Muslim and usually volunteers with the Christmas festivities in the Holy Land, as do Palestinians of different religions. There’s camaraderie among the Palestinian Muslims and Christians in Bethlehem, she said — during Ramadan, Christians will wake up their Muslim neighbors to eat before sunup and the fast begins.
“You bring both together to create a full circle of what it really means to be in the holy place,” she said.
But this year, with public Christmas celebrations canceled because of the conflict in Gaza and in solidarity, they won’t be volunteering.
To many, unity during the holidays means connecting with family.
Seph MacAndrew, 26, was raised in a nondenominational church, but now honors Christmas traditions outside of religion, seeing as holy the holiday moments shared — laughter, watching movies together and distributing their father’s holiday tips from his job as a postal carrier, which the family calls “second Christmas.”
“We always look forward to that because everyone loves cash,” MacAndrew said.
It’s those little things that bring Christmas and the growing family together — MacAndrew has 11 nieces and nephews, and a sister who is pregnant — and “Every Christmas, that builds into the junk drawer of traditions that we have.”
Those kinds of small happenings can help people in the LGBTQ+ community move Christmas from a more capitalist, heteronormative, religious celebration to a more individually meaningful one, says MacAndrew, who identifies as queer.
“Renew and regroup what Christmas means to you,” McAndrew said about holiday traditions. “Which sounds so Hallmark and corny, but having that meaning for yourself individually, whether it’s new traditions or even just like, you know, finding new ways to celebrate.”
MacAndrew’s holiday celebrations keep changing, and in 2024, so will the tips: “My dad’s gonna be retiring next year.”
For Roni Mosakowski, this holiday will not be huge.
“I’m not physically with most of my family, whether it’s to distance or loss,” the New York resident told CBS News.
She will celebrate with her daughters, finding ways to incorporate their memories of her husband Sam, who died in 2015.
“We tend to make it special by acknowledging the people that aren’t there to decorate and celebrate with us,” Mosakowski said. “So we have ornaments with pictures of my late husband.”
Sammy, Mosakowski’s oldest daughter, takes the lead on memorializing her dad during the holidays. She still hangs his stocking, which is filled with new Christmas cards, in her bedroom.
“We’ve started to kind of add in things that are less painful for me,” her mother said. “Not as much of the old things that trigger my memories, but more of the new things that we now do to celebrate and incorporate him.”
New additions — and new traditions — remain constant for many during the holidays.
This year, Leela Harpur Heyder and Gunther Heyder became parents to now-7-month-old Zahara. On Christmas, they wanted to turn a gift into an experience and a memory, Harpur Hayder said.
“We’re basically taking a pause for the three of us to be together in a van and travel around New Zealand, North Island and South Island, getting out in nature as much as we can and just being together,” Harpur Heyder said.
The Heyders, together for 10 years, don’t want to grow old waiting for moments that make for lasting memories.
“The main focus of this trip is just to spend time with each other, be present and just hopefully surf away, catch some fish and hike some beautiful sceneries,” Heyder said.
And for many people, coming together for the holidays means around the table, over traditional foods. For Francisco Treviño, who runs a Hispanic cultural center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, that’s tamales, buñuelos — sweet fried treats — and champurrado, a type of hot chocolate.
The holiday treats take him back to when he was a child in Mexico, he said — and are part of the traditions he’s trying to pass on to his community’s children, which include the posadas celebrations.
“We sit them down and explain to them why we do las posadas and of course, without missing the true significance of celebrating las posadas.”
Posadas celebrates Mary and Joseph’s journey to Bethlehem during December. The massive events ignite the holiday season for families across Latin America, which lasts through Jan. 6 for some, known as Epiphany or Dia de los Reyes, the day of the three wise men, known as Los Tres Reyes Magos.
In Mexico, Spain and many other countries, families exchange presents then, commemorating the gifts given to Jesus in the Nativity story.
Bryan Rub, a real estate entrepreneur who recently made the transition back home to South Florida, provided an image of hope that encompassed so many of the wishes captured in these interviews.
Rub recounted with pride one night of Hanukkah this year, when his local Jewish community gathered to pray in unison and light the menorah, a tradition passed from parents to children for thousands and thousands of years.
Unity in prayer, even if Bethlehem is closed this year, is, for Rub and others in America, this year’s gift to cherish.
“You’re really challenged to, to push forward and stand firm in what you believe.”
“What are we really united around?” said Amilcar Shabazz.
Though he was raised in a Louisana Creole family that celebrated Christmas, Shabazz will instead celebrate Kwanzaa, the seven-day holiday dedicated to reflecting on the gifts of African culture. The first day’s gift, umoja, represents unity — and Shabazz, a professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst is conscious of national unity and the fragility of democracy as we head into the 2024 elections.
“It’s therefore a time to really sift through all of that and look for the truth, look for the truth of our reality, the truth of the problems that beset us.”
A woman was found dead inside the belly of a snake after it swallowed her whole in central Indonesia last week, police said, the second python killing in the province in a month.
Siriati, 36, had gone missing after she left her house Tuesday morning to buy medicine for her sick child, police said Wednesday, prompting relatives to launch a search.
Her husband Adiansa, 30, found her slippers and pants on the ground about 500 meters from their house in Siteba village, South Sulawesi province.
“Shortly after that, he spotted a snake, about 10 meters from the path. The snake was still alive,” local police chief Idul, who like many Indonesians has one name, told AFP.
Village secretary Iyang told AFP that Adiansa became suspicious after he noticed the python’s “very large” belly. He called the villagers to help cut open its stomach, where they found her body.
The fatal attack comes about a month after a woman was found dead inside the belly of a reticulated python in another district of South Sulawesi. Graphic video published by TMZ appeared to show the snake being cut open in a wooded area while more footage posted by the Daily Mail appeared to show the woman’s body being carried in a blanket past distressed villagers.
Deadly python attacks in recent years
Such incidents are considered extremely rare, but several people have been swallowed by pythons in recent years.
Last year residents in the province killed an eight-meter python, which was found strangling and eating one of the farmers in a village.
In 2022, a woman in Indonesia’s Jambi province was killed and swallowed whole by a python, the BBC reported, citing local media.
A 54-year-old woman was found dead in 2018 inside a seven-meter python in Southeast Sulawesi’s Muna town.
The year before that, a farmer in West Sulawesi went missing before being found eaten alive by a four-meter python at a palm oil plantation. A six-minute video obtained by CBS News showed villagers slicing open the python’s carcass to reveal the legs and torso of the dead victim, named Akbar.
The reticulated python is the longest snake in the world, according to London’s Natural History Museum. They are native to Southern Asia and can grow to be more than 20 feet long.
Axel Heimken/picture alliance via Getty Images
The longest reticulated python ever found in the wild was discovered in 1912, according to the museum, and was measured to be nearly 33 feet long – “more than half the length of a bowling lane and makes this snake longer than a giraffe is tall.”
Zoo Atlanta, which houses reticulated pythons, says the snakes “have a reputation for being aggressive.”
CBS News
Divers exploring ancient shipwreck where human remains found off Greece discover second wreck, new treasures
A new survey of an iconic ancient shipwreck off the coast of Greece has revealed new treasures — and the remains of a second sunken vessel — more than 2,000 years after it plunged to the bottom of the Aegean Sea.
During a recent expedition at the site of the Antikythera shipwreck, marine archaeologists uncovered about 300 new objects, including 18 marble statue fragments, a previously undiscovered part of the vessel’s hull and the remains of a wooden ship that was “beneath the crushed cargo it was carrying,” the Greek Ministry of Culture announced last week.
The Antikythera shipwreck, which dates to the 1st century BC, was originally discovered in the Aegean Sea by sponge divers in 1900. In the decades since, researchers have tried to the identify human remains found in the wreck, as well as learn more details about the mysterious fate of the Roman-era ship.
Greek Ministry of Culture
The most recent survey, conducted from May 17 to June 20, revealed the wreckage of a second ship and new artworks, which scientists said triggered brand new questions.
“Was there only one ship involved in this ancient maritime tragedy? How exactly did the wreck happen? Did the human remains recovered in recent years belong to passengers or crew members?” the ministry wrote in a news release, which included seven images from the expedition.
The archaeologists, aided by exceptionally good weather conditions, were able to study two sites, Area A and Area B, which are more than 600 feet apart and over 150 feet below the water’s surface. Researchers said “the most important find” in Area A was a previously unseen part of the ship’s hull that combines important nautical features, including wooden planks and copper pins, which confirmed the exact orientation of the ancient ship.
“Through the ongoing comparative study of data, the question arises whether more than one ship sank during the same event in Antikythera,” the ministry said.
In Area B, archaeologists discovered pottery very similar to that recovered over the decades from the main wreck site — and further excavation confirmed the presence of the remains of a wooden ship, found under its crushed cargo.
At both sites, divers found marble fragments from sculptures, including several marble fingers, a part of a palm, and fragments of clothing. Researchers were able to determine that all the fragments were parts of different statues.
Divers also uncovered more than 200 ceramic fragments, including an oil lamp, a two-handled vase and table pottery.
Greek Ministry of Culture
The recent expedition, led by Angeliki G. Simosi and Lorenz Baumer, was part of the Swiss School of Archaeology in Greece’s (ESAG) 2021-2025 research program, the ministry said. The site is perhaps most famous for the discovery of the Antikythera mechanism, a mysterious device with interlocking gears that appears to be an “astronomical calculation machine of immense complexity,” according to Scientific American. It is often referred to as the world’s oldest analog computer.
Countless shipwrecks are scattered off the coast of Greece. Earlier this year, Greek researchers using Homer’s “Iliad” as a guide announced they found 10 shipwrecks, including one estimated to be more than 5,000 years old and another from the World War II era.
Less than a week after an Arizona man reported his wife missing, launching an expansive search that quickly turned into a criminal investigation, he admitted to killing her and pleaded guilty to murder, authorities announced Friday.
As part of a deal with prosecutors in Coconino County, Daniel Paduchowski pleaded guilty Friday to second-degree murder in the death of his 45-year-old wife, Kelly. He also pleaded guilty to tampering with physical evidence, concealment of a dead body and possession of dangerous drugs, according to a copy of the plea agreement.
Details surrounding where Kelly Paduchowski’s remains were found weren’t immediately released, but the Flagstaff Police Department confirmed that her body was found around 10 a.m. after Daniel Paduchowski led authorities to Kelly’s remains, cell phone and the murder weapon, CBS affiliate KPHO-TV reported.
Flagstaff Police Department/KPHO
The plea agreement, reached earlier Friday before the Flagstaff Police Department held an afternoon news conference, marks a stunning and swift resolution to a homicide case that was opened just days earlier and that could have otherwise stretched for years as it made its way through the legal system.
At the news conference, Flagstaff Police Chief Sean Connolly emphasized that it had been just six days since authorities were alerted to Kelly Paduchowski’s disappearance.
“I was at the barber. I’ve been at the dry cleaners. I’ve been to restaurants and businesses, and this has been on everybody’s mind,” he said. “When communities are not indifferent, and they are engaged at this level, these are the outcomes that you have.”
Authorities didn’t provide any details about what might have led to the killing, nor did the plea agreement include information indicating a possible motive.
However, court documents obtained by KPHO-TV detail how neighbors reportedly heard a scream and saw Kelly Paduchowski lying face down in the yard, with her husband on top of her. Documents described that neighbors later saw Daniel Paduchowski spraying down the same area with a hose, the station reported, and investigators later found fresh blood at the residence.
Paduchowski’s attorney did not immediately respond to email and phone messages seeking comment.
Michael Tunink, a senior attorney at the Coconino County attorney’s office, said Daniel Paduchowski, 58, is expected to be sentenced to 16 years without the possibility of parole for the murder charge. His sentencing is scheduled for Sept. 10.
Authorities said Paduchowski called Flagstaff police on Sunday night, saying his wife never returned after leaving to go for a run and a swim at Lake Mary, southeast of Flagstaff.
Police said they quickly began to suspect Daniel Paduchowski had been involved in his wife’s disappearance, after the woman’s relatives found her car on the other side of town.
By Monday morning, police said, the missing persons case had turned into a homicide investigation. The Flagstaff Police Department announced Daniel Paduchowski’s arrest the next day.
As part of his deal with prosecutors, Daniel Paduchowski provided authorities with information about his wife’s remains and other evidence, including her cellphone, car keys and a weapon allegedly used to kill her, Tunink said.
Flagstaff police said they found Kelly Paduchowski’s remains on Friday morning but did not release the location, citing active “recovery efforts.”
Authorities said the search for Kelly Paduchowski was expansive, including local and federal agencies, nearly 50 search and rescue members who searched by foot, helicopter and on mountain bikes, as well as search dogs and drones. About 60 people from the community also volunteered for the search effort, police said.
Connolly, the Flagstaff police chief, said Friday that authorities have been in constant contact with the victim’s relatives, including her children.
“Since the moment I sat in the living room with Kelly’s family, I cannot tell you how impressed I have been with their strength and their resolve in handling this incredibly tragic situation,” he said.
Kelly Paduchowski’s family sent KPHO-TV a statement that reads in part: “…We feel a sense of resolve. We are immensely grateful to the law enforcement teams who have been working closely with us, the city of Flagstaff has been wonderful.”
