Potlach, Las Posadas and cranberries: Sharing holiday traditions at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights

From picking cranberries near Churchill to making cabbage rolls, stories of different holiday traditions are hanging at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights.

It's part of a special program called Traditions of Hope and Diversity.

"We look at the cards and we can see our common humanity in cultures in food, in sharing with family ... and also the diversity right even within our own city and our own cultures here," said Maureen Fitzhenry, media relations manager for the museum.

People who come to the program are given yellow or blue cards and are asked to share a holiday tradition, either one that's been in the family or a new tradition that they've picked up over the years. The cards are then strung on a huge clothesline across the museum for all of the visitors to read.

"I just can't believe the amazing things people write and how good they are," Fitzhenry said.

The program started on Boxing Day and Fitzhenry said they've seen a major trend — food.

"They write about having chocolate mousse on Christmas Day and one person wrote about making Hungarian cabbage rolls on Christmas Eve," she said.

Another person wrote about potlatch, a gift-giving feast practiced by some Indigenous communities. A visitor from India wrote about touching the feet of elders and asking for a blessing and another visitor from Mexico wrote about Las Posadas, a nine-day tradition.

However, Fitzhenry said that no one has been writing about presents.

"People wrote too about the things they do for others, like delivering hampers, caroling and nobody wrote about presents," she said.

The program runs until Jan. 8.