There are many reasons why people started to decorate their houses in the wintertime. Long ago, people believed that by decorating the greenery in the winter time, they would make them beautiful for the spirits, which they believed had fled to cover from the cold weather. Much later, people began to take green branches into their homes during the wintertime to give warmth and shelter to these spirits, they would release them again in the early spring.

In the sixth century missionaries from Rome were sent throughout Europe to convert the people. Allowances were made to make the step from pagan to Christian easier to take. Pagan rituals were incorporated into Christianity and the decorations stayed, but as a celebration to honor the Birthday of the Son of God. The pagan superstitions remained while new meanings and symbols developed.

Bring in the greenery!
Holly is a symbol of eternal life. Druids thought this plant stayed green year round because it was especially favored by the sun.

Mistletoe was held sacred by ancient peoples. It was forbidden to fight in the presence of mistletoe. Therefore it became a symbol for peace and joy.

Hang a Christmas wreath on the front door.
In ancient Rome, people used decorative wreaths as a sign of victory. The idea to hang them on the front door lies in the belief that round shaped Christmas wreaths bring contentment and good luck in the approaching year.

Leave a candle burning in the window.
A Christmas candle left burning in the window all night is believed to bring the household’s good luck in the coming year. If the candles goes out, it is bad luck. Primarily it was, and still is, a symbol of welcome to Mary and Joseph as they travelled looking for shelter.

Hang the stockings at the chimney.
Stockings are hung by the chimney at Christmas, in memory of the generosity of St. Nicholas. The legend is that out of sympathy he tossed three coins down the chimney of the home of three poor sisters. Each coin fell neatly into stockings left drying by the hearth.

Spider webs in the tree.
Hang some cobwebs in your Christmas tree for good luck. According to a Ukrainian legend a poor woman had nothing to put on her children’s tree. When she woke on Christmas morning she found the branches covered with spider webs turned to silver by the rising sun.

Removing the decorations.
As the druids would remove the branches in early spring and up until the 19th century, people would keep the decorations until Candlemas at 2 February. Since the reign of Victoria it is custom that Christmas decorations come down before the end of the 12th day, on January 6. Superstitions say that it is bad luck to leave it for another day or take it down before that date.

Christmas is not celebrated they same way throughout the United States. Different regions had different settlers in the history, all bringing in different traditions and different cultures. In modern day America, there are still many variations of Christmas celebrations visible.

In Pennsylvania, the Moravians celebrate Christmas with a “Love-Fest”, a special service when Moravians share a simple meal together in church. After the meal there is a candle service at which candles are passed out to everyone in the church while children sing a special hymn.

In Alaska, children wander from house to house carrying a colored lantern in the shape of a star on a long pole, while they sing Christmas carols.

In Arizona, Christmas is celebrated according to Mexican traditions with a ritual called Las Posadas. Families join a procession to visit each other’s houses to admire the nativity cribs. It represents the search of Joseph and Mary searching for a room to stay.

In Florida, it is tradition to decorate the houses with thousands of Christmas light. The Osborne family topped it all with three million lights that could be seen from an airplane from 80 miles distance. Since 1995, the display has moved to Disney World, Orlando, after the Supreme Court ordered it to be shut down permanently at their Little Rock home. It now features more than 5 million lights.

In Palmer Lake, Colorado, a 500-feet Christmas Star is lit during the month of December on the side of Sundance Mountain.

In Washington, a large tree near the White House is decorated as the National Christmas Tree.

In San Filipe Pueblo, New Mexico, the community holds native animal-masked dances after the Xmas Eve sermon, according to ritual dances that the American Indians held during the winter solstice.

Even though the Americans hold on to different traditions in different regions, they also have created new traditions. One of them is “the more, the merrier”. Americans like pre-arranged Christmas gatherings with many people. Also tree decorating and gift giving is baked into all cultures. Commercialization of Christmas resulted in more common traditions throughout the United States and the rest of the world.

Christmas tree ornaments are as much part of Christmas as Santa Claus, Christmas cards and Christmas gifts. We cannot imagine this holiday without them. But where did these traditions come from? Most of the Christmas traditions came from central Europe, and were brought to America by the early settlers. The Christmas ornaments traveled from Germany, through England to America and gradually changed from apples to glass blown figurines.

The original German Christmas trees were adorned with food; apples, onions, nuts and candies were placed on a tree.

In the 19th century, glass ornaments were first made in Germany. In general, only men did the glassblowing, women silvered the glass balls and the children painted and turned them into beautiful glass Christmas ornaments.

When Prince Albert, from Germany, married Queen Victoria of England, he brought the tradition of tree decorating to England. Soon it became popular and all of England was decorating trees at Christmas.

Some of these Englishmen immigrated to North America and took their Christmas traditions with them. Christmas started to become a widely spread holiday in North America and as with everything made in this new country, the ornaments got larger and brighter.

F.W. Woolworth was the first North American merchant to sell glass ornaments in 1880. Within a decade he was selling $25 million worth of ornaments per year.

Nearly all hand blown glass ornaments were produced in Germany, until in 1925 Japan started to produce large numbers of glass Christmas ornaments for export.

When the Second World War broke out and European factories stopped making the Christmas ornaments, US manufacturers began making them. Corning used a machine designed for making light bulbs to produce more than 300,000 glass ornament balls per day.

Now, the American people spend billions of dollars yearly on Christmas ornaments. Glass Christmas ornaments come in all shapes, sizes and colors.

There are approximately 350 million Christians in Africa. Christmas is celebrated all over Africa by Christians. Christmas songs are sung from the Congo to South Africa. On Christmas day, meats are roasted, presents are exchanged and family visits made. The Coptic Christians in Ethiopia and Egypt celebrate Christmas on the 6th of January (rather than the 25th of December), because just like the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox, they follow the Julian Calendar.

During Christmas worship in Africa, one of the most significant things is the love offering to Jesus. And going to church is generally the main focus of Christmas celebrations in Africa. Nativity scenes are displayed, carols are sung and in some places dances are performed.

Christmas Decorations:
It is a common practice in African Christian communities to decorate shop fronts, mango trees, churches and homes for Christmas. You might find fake snow decorations, pine branches, and Christmas fir. Also other trees than the famous pine can be used as a Christmas tree; palm trees laden with candles and bells.

Christmas Dinner:
After attending church, the family Christmas meal is second priority for African Christians. Lunches and dinners are usually in local style. Spending time together with the beloved ones is the most important thing. Open air lunches of roasted goat are common in East Africa. Barbeques on the beaches of South Africa or according to traditions left behind by the British; with mince pies, turkey and plum pudding. In Ghana Christmas dinner will surely include fufu and okra soup, while Zimbabweans make sure there are plenty of bread, jam and tea to eat along with their goat meat.

Gift Giving:
African people do buy some gifts for relatives or beloved ones, but Christmas is not as commercial as in America. The prominence is more given to the sacred part of celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ, and gift giving is not very important. In rural Africa it is hard to come by a toy store, and even so it is often not affordable. Popular Christmas gifts usually are school books, soap, cloth, candles and other practical goods.

    
• The universal abbreviation for Christmas to Xmas comes from the Greek alphabet. X is letter Chi, which is the first letter of Christ’s name.
• The word Christmas comes from Cristes maesse, or “Christ’s Mass.”
• Pope Julius I declared Christ’s birthday as December 25th sometime during the 4th century. There is no set date for his birth in scripture and it wasn’t celebrated on any particular day. However Christmas was first celebrated on the 25th of December in Rome in 336AD with an aim to replacing the popular pagan winter solstice celebrations.
• 26 December was known as St Stephen’s Day, but is now more generally referred to as Boxing Day. This term lends its name to the alms-boxes placed in churches during the festive season for collecting money. This money was then given to the poor and needy after Christmas. Another assumption is that although servants were forced to work on Christmas Day, they were given a day off the day after to visit family. Usually employers would send them off with a box containing gifts and food, hence the term “Boxing Day.”
• Some priests advise you to say “Happy Christmas”, instead of “Merry Christmas”, because Merry has undertone of getting drunk – and is not appropriate at Christmas. One should say “Happy” instead.
• Poet Clark Moore is credited with naming Santa’s reindeer; Blitzen, Comet, Cupid, Dancer, Dasher, Doneder, Prancer, and the most famous reindeer, Rudolph.
• The twelve days of Christmas are the days between Christmas Day and Epiphany (6th of January) and represent the length of time it took for the wise men from the East to visit the manger of Jesus after his birth.
• The popular Christmas carol Silent Night was written by an Austrian priest named Joseph Mohr in 1818 as a result of a broken church organ.
• Bing Crosby’s Christmas classic “White Christmas” is the best-selling Christmas song of all time.
• Some Christmas traditions are leftovers from pre-Christian celebrations. Hanging gifts on trees is supposed to come from tree worship of the Druids, and the belief that the tree was the giver of all good things.



• The evergreen tree, because it is perpetually green, has been used as a symbol of eternal life since the ancient Egyptians and Hebrews. The Scandinavians believed that the evergreen could even scare away the devil. Decorating an evergreen tree in honor of Xmas became popular in the Middle Ages, especially in Germany. The decorations then consisted of candles and wafers, to symbolize Christ and the Host. Martin Luther is actually said to be the first person to put candles on a tree.
• There are approximately 30-35 million Real Christmas Trees sold in the U.S. every year.
• In earlier times, Christians used to decorate their homes with Saturnalia holly. During Roman pagan festival, this prevented persecution.
• A traditional Christmas dinner in early England was the head of a pig prepared with mustard.

We can hardly imagine a Christmas without gifts. Christmas is a unique celebration of merry making and gift-giving. The custom of giving presents in this time of the year owes its origin to the Magi. The magi, as you know, were wise men who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger.  They came from the east of Jerusalem to greet the Babe in the manger with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.

Although the Magi are associated more with the Feast of Epiphany on January 6, they can be considered as the initiators of the gift-giving ritual following the birth of Jesus. In America giving presents at Christmas was not a custom until not long ago. It arrived with the introduction of St. Nicholas by the early Dutch settlers. Giving presents at New Year was a more common practice, especially amid the English and French settlers. But the joint German and Dutch influences in time resulted in all gift-giving to be done at Christmas.

The first advertising for Christmas presents originates from the early 1800s, around 1804. By the 1820s ads began to spring up more and more, and by the 1840s Christmas gifts were an fundamental part American Society. What had once been the undemanding practice of giving small gifts exploded into the consumer driven holiday we now know.

Many people are annoyed that Christmas today is all about presents, and state that is was not like when they were a kids. In reality people have been saying that for over 150 years already. In a story from the 1850s we learn that people said at that time already that it was not like when they were kids and that people were wasting a lot of money in the holiday season. And it is correct that the commercialization of Christmas happened in that period.

However, it can also be said that the gifts are getting bigger, more expensive and more extravagant in time. It is getting harder and harder to find a ‘special’ Christmas gift, especially when you have to find that one special gift among the heaps of commercial rubbish sold everywhere.