Christmas Traditions from Around the Globe
Some Christmas Musings and Three Interesting Traditions from Around the Globe
Christmas started as a religious holiday, but it morphed into a cultural one. People start talking about the holiday season at the beginning of December, and the holiday mood does not wear off until the end of January. Shopping, eating, decorating, vacationing, meeting friends and relatives, and gift giving come to the fore. Even the food comas of past years do not stop people from gorging on Christmas goodies this year!
Gift giving
Do you like to give gifts? We have had success with some simple ideas; for example: spending time going through images to find just the right ones for a photo collage for a loved one is a wonderful present. It could be a homemade collage or you could get a professional one made. We got one with all our important post-marriage photographs from a close relative. She had put it together and got it printed on canvas; it still hangs on our wall.
We gave our kids a subscription to an educational online game, among other things, as they had been very co-operative in their monitoring their own screen time. Magazine subscriptions are a great gift idea as well. Your gift reaches your loved ones throughout the year. Many times, favorite issues stay on the bookshelf long after the year is gone.
Influence of Seasons over Tradition
Christ’s mass, the source of the word “Christmas,” is a commemoration of the birth of Jesus Christ that started as a Christian festival. But popular customs that became a part of the tradition had their origins in pre-Christian celebrations around the winter solstice.
Though the winter solstice was the shortest day, it was celebration of the fact that from then on, the days would lengthen and that summer and warm weather would be back soon. Romans celebrated Saturnalia for an entire week, honoring Saturn (god of agriculture) when they celebrated the winter solstice. Many say this celebration was absorbed into and celebrated as Christmas.
One inspiration for gift giving is said to be the Magi, who brought gifts to the Christ child in the manger. Whatever the reasons, gift giving is well entrenched and much loved at Christmas!
By the way, the Northern Hemisphere has its winter solstice between Dec 21st and 22nd, whereas the Southern Hemisphere has it in June, so Australia and countries “down under” have a summery Christmas. New Zealand’s Pohutukawa flower is used as a symbol of Christmas as it flowers in December. Today, it’s also known as the New Zealand Christmas Tree!
Common Christmas Traditions
Festivals are all about traditions and Christmas has its share. A few popular ones are: bringing a tree into the house and decorating it, hanging mistletoe and kissing under it, setting up a Nativity scene, building a gingerbread house, sending Christmas letters and cards, hanging outdoor lights, Christmas caroling, and, of course, gift giving.
Three Interesting Traditions
In Ethiopia, Christmas is called genna or Lidet. As they still follow the Julian calendar, their Christmas is on Jan 7th. Many of their churches are carved out of a single rock, as the one pictured here. On Christmas, people dress in white and start attending church service very early in the morning. They go from church to church and spend many hours on their feet. In the evening the young men play a field hockey-like game. Gift giving is simple and kids are generally presented with a set of clothes.
Ukraine is yet another country which still follows the Julian calendar and therefore celebrates the Christmas holiday season between Jan 6th and 19th. They have a 12-course meal in memory of the 12 apostles. A lighted candle is kept at the window to invite the homeless stranger for a meal. Every Christmas tree is decorated with a spider, to commemorate the household spider that spun silvery webs on a tree outside a poor widow’s home, as she could not afford tree decorations. The widow and her children woke up to a tree that sparkled brightly as the Sun’s rays fell on the spider’s handiwork. Even today it is believed that spiders bring good luck in Ukraine.
Norway, one of the northernmost countries in Europe, has one of the harshest winters. Jul (Yule) is the Norwegian word for Christmas. It was a pre-Christian, hard-drinking Viking festival. Some centuries ago, Jul was moved to Dec 25th to combine it with the celebration of Christmas. Animals were slaughtered, homes were cleaned, beer was brewed, bread baked and it was party time!
Julennisse was Father Christmas. A place was laid for him at the table and good kids got their gifts from him on Christmas Eve. The most fun detail is that of families hiding all their brooms, so the witches and other spirits who came out that day could not steal their brooms for riding!
All-round joy
Whatever the tradition, the Christmas holiday is a time of sharing and relaxing with family and friends.
By George Schalter
George loves being a dad. He and his wife share the joys and responsibilities of bringing up their two children. As believers in good, all-round education, they spend a lot of time playing with their children and being outdoors. As the writer in the family, George blogs at educationalkidsgames.edublogs.org.
Illustration by Albina Nogueira
Albina Nogueira has been a primary school teacher since 1992, and a writer and illustrator since 2006. She currently lives in Switzerland, but her homeland is Portugal. She is also the author of Letters to Grandparents and Hairdresser. To find out more, like her on Facebook or see her books in Amazon.
Photo credits:
1. “Pohutukawa flowers” by Bjankuloski06en – Own work. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons – http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pohutukawa_flowers.JPG#mediaviewer/File:Pohutukawa_flowers.JPG
2. By Bernard Gagnon (own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons. Biete Giyorgis(Church of St. George), Ethiopia http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bete_Giyorgis_03.jpg
