Christmas customs and traditions around the world

The peoples of the Earth join their hearts in the great communion of mankind that the Christmas season can bring.

Learning about the Christmas customs of various nations helps us understand the wide variety of traditions that families have practised for many centuries around the globe. It’s interesting to note how many aspects of Christmas have been adopted and adapted as they move across borders.

Australia

Many Australians still look to their British roots at this special time of year and a traditional Christmas meal usually includes a turkey dinner, sometimes with ham. Often a flaming Christmas plum pudding is added for dessert or else a special Australian meringue confection, Pavlova - adorned with kiwifruit and passionfruit.

Some Australians and particularly tourists have their Christmas dinner (midday) on a local beach. Bondi Beach in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs attracts thousands of people on December 25th. Other families enjoy their day on a picnic. If they are at home, the day may be punctuated by swimming in the pool, playing Cricket in the backyard, and other outdoor activities beneath swaying palms.

In Sydney, an interdenominational carols and scripture service is conducted at St. Mary’s Cathedral. Hundreds of singers from dozens of church choirs file into the cathedral singing “Adeste Fideles” to open the annual event.

Carols by Candlelight is one tradition that is purely Australian. It began on Christmas Eve in Melbourne in 1937 and is now an annual event in the days leading up to Christmas in cities and towns all across the nation.

Christmas shopping is often done in shorts and t-shirts and the days following Christmas are filled with neighbourhood backyard parties and barbecues.

In recent years, some residents long for a wintry setting for a Christmas celebration. This longing has developed into a Christmas in June or Christmas in July tradition. People head up into the cool mountains for a campout where they sing carols around a campfire.

Britain

No other people have observed the Christmas season with such wild abandon as the English, and they have been celebrating it for more than a thousand years. According to legend, King Arthur made merry in York in 521 surrounded by “minstrels, gleemen, harpers, pipe-players, jugglers, and dancers.” Ever since, except for a brief period of Cromwellian rule when Christmas went underground, hearty feasting and merrymaking have been the order of the season.

“For many people, Christmas was reinvented by the Victorian/nineteenth century society,” says Countess Maria Hubert von Staufer, Director of Christmas Archives International in the United Kingdom. “It is a popular misconception that Christmas in England was eradicated by the Cromwellians in the seventeenth century and was only reinvented by the Victorians.”

Today, the British Isles usher in the holiday season with jubilant sound: church bells pealing, handbells ringing, choirs singing, and buskers and waits performing on street corners.

Caroling is one of the oldest customs in Great Britain, going back to the Middle Ages when beggars, seeking food, money, or drink, would wander the streets singing holiday songs.

Waits were originally watchmen who patrolled the streets and byways of the old walled cities keeping guard against fire and singing out the hours of the night. During the holiday season, they would include some carols for the people along the way, although some folks complained that they would rather get a good night’s sleep than have somebody singing under their window.

The Christmas tree is central to England’s holiday celebration ever since Queen Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert, carried the idea from his native Germany in the mid-nineteenth century. However, it has not entirely eclipsed the kissing bough (a mixture of evergreens and mistletoe).

The tree is a gift from the people of Oslo, Norway. During the Second World War, King Haakon of Norway was forced into exile in England when the Germans occupied his nation. Each year during his exile, Norwegian forces would risk their lives to smuggle a tree past the German coast patrols so their king could celebrate Christmas before a tree from his beloved homeland. Since the war, Norway has expressed its thanks for the help of the British people by continuing to send a huge Norwegian spruce to be shared by all.

China

There are an estimated four million people in China who are Christian.

Christian missionaries first arrived in Xian, the ancient capital and cradle of Chinese civilization, in 625.

In 1999, a nativity scene, made from wood and plaster circa A.D. 780, was found on a shadowy wall of a crumbling 1,200-year-old pagoda on the windswept hillside of a Tao monastery near the ancient capital city.

The nativity scene combines Chinese landscape imagery with the reclining figure of the Madonna, according to Martin Palmer, the British scholar who found it. While badly eroded, the towering wall sculpture is clearly not a Chinese creation but a fascinating meld of Eastern and Western spirituality.

Since the vast majority of the Chinese people are not Christian, the main winter festival in China is the Chinese New Year which takes place toward the end of January. Now officially called the “Spring Festival,” it is a time when children receive new clothing, eat luxurious meals, receive new toys, and enjoy firecracker displays.

Canada

When German settlers migrated to Canada in the 1700s, they arrived with many of the Christmas traditions that Canadians still cherish today - Christmas trees, carols, Advent calendars, gingerbread houses, cookies and much more.

French Jesuit missionaries established Christianity in native villages in the late 1600s. As a result of this heritage, gift giving, feasting, singing, dancing and drumming, games of strength are all a part of the mid-winter celebrations for the First Nations groups.

Missionaries also brought Christianity to the Inuit and today they celebrate Christmas with huge feasts that feature caribou, seal and raw fish, along with turkey.

On Christmas Eve, they end a day of fasting with Sviata Vechera, or Holy Supper. Combining agrarian symbols and Christian symbols, twelve dishes are served which represent the twelve disciples and the cycles of the moon. The twelve dishes also represent the most valuable products of the field, garden, and orchard. There is no meat or milk served with the meal as a sign of respect for the farm animals that are depended upon all year long.

Prior to the meal, a sheaf of wheat is brought into the house by the father or head of the household. He walks around the inside of the home three times and then places the wheat in a corner of the kitchen or dining room near the family’s holy icon. There it remains throughout the Christmas season. This sheaf represents the entire family including departed ancestors and the generations to come. The souls of the family are thought to be in the sheaf and it represents both the Christian belief in an afterlife and the bountiful fertility of the land.

Finland

Families gather together on Christmas Eve which is the most important day of the year in Finland. Most children who have grown up and moved away from home plan to return to their parents home for the holiday.

The shops across the nation close at noon so everyone has to have their shopping done by that time.

At the stroke of noon the “Peace of Christmas” is proclaimed in Turku, the former capital of Finland, Some of the Christmas readings heard on the broadcast date from the Middle Ages. This marks the “official” beginning of the Christmas celebrations and most families enjoy the first part of their Christmas meal at this point.

On Christmas Eve, children await the arrival of Father Christmas. He differs from his counterparts in other nations in that he actually enters the house for a visit at this time instead of during the night when the children are asleep. Father Christmas always asks the same question upon his arrival: “Are there any good children here?” The answer is always an enthusiastic “Yes”.

Israel

Christmas comes three times each year to the city of Bethlehem. While the Western Church and Russian Orthodox Church both celebrate Christmas on December 25, the Russian Church still uses the old Julian calendar which places their celebration on January 7 according to our calendar. The Armenian Church celebrates on January 6 by the Julian calendar, which translates as January 19 to us. To add to the confusion, our January 6 celebration of Epiphany overlaps into the Russian Christmas.The Church of the Nativity was built by Emperor Justinian in the sixth century over the ruins of an older church built by the Emperor Constantine and his mother, St. Helena. That church had been built to replace a temple to the Greek god Adonis. All of these structures were built over a series of caves that were considered to be the location of Christ’s birth.

There is a fourteen-pointed silver star marking the location of the original manger. It was donated by the Turkish Sultan after a previous star had disappeared. The floor around it is marked in Latin, Hic De Virgine Maria Jesus Christus Natus Est, “Here of the Virgin Mary, Jesus Christ was born.” Christmas Eve services traditionally begin at Shepherds’ Field and then move on to the church. There is room for only a few hundred people at the Mass and they are there by invitation only. Outside in Manger Square the service is broadcast on huge television screens to thousands of people who have joined together to be close to this special Christmas celebration.

Italy

The Italian Christmas, as it is celebrated today, has two origins: the familiar Christian traditions blended with the pagan traditions of the Roman Empire. The great feast of that era was “Saturnalia,” celebrated from December 17 to 24 to honour Saturn, god of the harvest. Now, these dates coincide with part of the pre-Christmas celebrations of Advent.

Consequently, Christmas markets, merry-making and torch processions, honour not only the birth of Jesus, but also the birth of the “Unconquered Sun.” Natale, the Italian word for Christmas, is the translation for “birthday.”

Christmas Eve is a time for viewing Italy’s famous Nativity scenes or presepi, some of great complexity and antiquity. Amidst the general merrymaking and religious observance of December 24, Christmas candles are lighted and a holiday feast is prepared. In most places, Christmas Eve dinner consists largely of fish and seafood since it is still technically part of the pre-Christmas fast. In some areas, seven fish are prepared in various ways in honour of the seven sacraments while tradition in other areas calls for twelve kinds of fish or seafood for Christmas Eve dinner to honour the Apostles who were considered “Fishers of Men.”

Wales

In the 21st century, the Welsh celebrate Christmas in the same manner as their English neighbours, but there are lingering traces of the old days in some distinctive holiday traditions.

Caroling is particularly popular in Wales where it is called eisteddfodde and is often accompanied by a harp. Every village has its own choir of trained singers and everyone else joins in. Each year an official set of words for a new Christmas carol is distributed to all the towns, and all vie with each other in creating the best music, which is judged in a national competition. The winning tune will be sung the following Christmas season by all the choirs and will become part of the great body of carols produced since the custom began in the tenth century.

In rural areas where old traditions remain steadfast, the main Christmas service is called Plygain and lasts from 4 a.m. until the rising of the sun on Christmas morning.

Courtesy: Bill Egan/Christmas World