Maria Pappas, Cook County Treasurer, in Illinois, organizes Annual Christmas celebrations and view over 80 holiday Christmas trees from around the world. The idea is the show the different traditions, customs of celebrating Christmas around the world and in different ethnic communities in Chicago area.
The recent Christmas celebration took place on Friday evening, December 2, 2016.
This is a very popular event among many ethnic communities in Cook County, Illinois. It provides an incredible opportunity to learn about other cultures, Christmas customs, how people decorate their Christmas trees.
Maria Pappas, the host plays a keyboard, encourages participants to join her in singing Christmas carols in English and in other languages.
Several hundred participants representing different ethnic communities attended celebrations in 2016. Some of them attended the event for many years, others for the first time.
This is a great example of diversity, inclusion, presenting important religious values for people from diversified ethnic backgrounds, age groups.
Maria Pappas gave credit to Pat Michalski, who has helped to develop this event.
Maria Pappas and her team creates a welcoming and wonderful atmosphere during the celebration of Christmas Around the World.
Romuald Polpawski, Pat Michalski, Maria Pappas, and Andrew Mikolajczyk
The Office of the Cook County Treasurer is very busy during the week days in dealing with complex financial decisions of 5,2 million people living in Cook County.
During the Christmas event everybody shares joy of the season, forgets for a moment about everyday challenges of life in such large metropolis like Chicago.
@ Andrew (Andrzej) Mikolajczyk
