Learn about different religious festivals

You’ll need

Masking tape or chalk
Festival facts

Festival facts

PDF – 90.4KB

Scouts is open to everyone. We don’t identify exclusively with one faith, and we welcome people of all faiths and of none.

We know it’s important for people to learn about each other, including understanding different faiths and beliefs. Scouts always respects people’s beliefs, faiths and cultures, and everyone should be open to learn.

As an inclusive and values based movement, we support our members to engage and learn about different faiths and beliefs in an exciting and meaningful way, even if they don’t have a faith themselves.

Celebrating and understanding differences, including differences in faiths and beliefs, is an important part of our Scout values, which are:

Integrity: We act with integrity; we are honest, trustworthy and loyal.
Respect: We have self-respect and respect for others.
Care: We support others and take care of the world in which we live.
Belief: We explore our faiths, beliefs and attitudes.
Co-operation: We make a positive difference; we co-operate with others and make friends.

Our value of Belief and its exploration helps Scouts to learn from other faiths and beliefs. This encourages them to develop or build their personal beliefs and understand their shared values, whether faith-based on not.

We know that learning about faiths, beliefs and different attitudes can help to break down barriers, helps us all to recognise what we have in common, and teaches us to value and respect other people. It also helps us to build up respect, acceptance and knowledge for each other, leading to a more co-operative and inclusive society.

In our diverse society, people can sometimes feel cautious talking about this sensitive subject. However, it's important that Scouts offers young people safe, exciting and open spaces to explore faiths and beliefs. They should be able to engage in personal reflection, as they question and develop their opinions and understanding of the world around them.

Making time for personal reflection and developing our beliefs means exploring the places, people, communities, celebrations or stories which hold meaning for us, and it may not necessarily mean exploring a faith.

For example, someone’s shared values may be their Scout Values and that person may choose to reflect on them at important times, such as when they make their Promise. Others may choose to reflect at certain times of the year, such as a faith-based festival, birthdays, meaningful events or at New Year. Some people may still celebrate events, such as Christmas, but use it as a time to celebrate family, friends and loved ones, as well as for charity and giving.

Discover more about Faiths and Beliefs in Scouts.

Before you begin

Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. Take a look at our guidance to help you carry out your risk assessment, including examples.
Make sure all young people and adults involved in the activity know how to take part safely.
Make sure you’ll have enough adult helpers. You may need some parents and carers to help if you’re short on helpers.

Planning and setting up this activity

Divide your meeting place into six areas using chalk or masking tape.
Label each of the areas with a different religious festival, such as: Christmas, Eid al-Fitr, Holi, Passover, Vaisakhi and Vesak.

Running this activity

Ask everyone should go to the middle of the space.
Show everyone the different festival labels in each area.
Explain that you’re going to call out an item or tradition which goes with one (or more) of the festivals.
Everyone should move to the festival they think the item or the tradition belongs to or is associated with.
When everyone’s chosen, let everyone know which festival(s) the item or tradition belonged to.
If people want to, they could talk about how and why they chose to move to the festival they’ve chosen.
Repeat this until everyone has an understanding of what they might find, or see, if they took part in celebrating any of the six celebrations.
After the activity, gather everyone together and see if anyone can remember what they learned.
We’ve included some suggestions for you to use, though you may wish to add some more or use your own. It’s best to include some traditions that are key to all of the festivals, such as prayer, spending time with friends and family, cleaning or decorating, and giving cards or gifts.

Reflection

This activity helped us think about how we can respect and value others for who they are, regardless of their background. Did you learn things about other faiths in this activity? Did anything surprise you? Were there any festivals which had similar (or even the same) traditions or objects? Why do you think this is (for example, giving gifts shows generosity and gratitude, lighting candles is a symbol or good or light conquering bad or darkness)? How does knowing more about how people celebrate help us to respect others?

This activity also reminded you that you’re a local, national, and international citizen. Have you ever joined in with celebrating one (or more) of these celebrations? Is it important to understand the festivals other citizens celebrate? What do you have in common with other citizens? What parts of being a citizen might we emphasise during festivals (for example, helping other people, reflecting)?

Safety

All activities must be safely managed. You must complete a thorough risk assessment and take appropriate steps to reduce risk. Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. Always get approval for the activity, and have suitable supervision and an InTouch process.

Active games: The game area should be free of hazards. Explain the rules of the game clearly and have a clear way to communicate that the game must stop when needed. Take a look at our guidance on running active games safely.

This activity is a great chance to find out what we do and don’t know about different faiths, as well as to ask questions. Remember that faith is really important to lots of people – everyone should be respectful, even if they don’t understand something.