Xmas traditions around the worldpage 1 / 5
Disney's A Christmas Carol, which stars Jim Carrey, tells the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, the world's worst miser. Scrooge wants nothing to do with the good cheer and charity traditionally associated with the Christmas season but, after a visit from three ghosts on Christmas Eve, he wakes up a changed man. Charles Dickens wrote the original story of A Christmas Carol in 1843, which was also the year that the very first Christmas card was sent and three years before Queen Victoria and her family introduced the Christmas tree to Britain.
As it was in Charles Dickens' day, Christmas remains Britain's most popular holiday and is now an important and eagerly-anticipated date on calendars in most countries worldwide, irrespective of people's religious beliefs. Yet if the Christmas spirit remains the same everywhere, different countries have very different approaches to gift-giving, Christmas decorations and food, and even the day on which Christmas is celebrated varies around the world...
Christmas in Asia
December 25th is a legal holiday in Hong Kong and Macau but not in the rest of CHINA since 99% of the Chinese people are not Christian, the main winter festival in China is the Chinese New Year or ‘Spring Festival' which takes place at the end of January. Nonetheless, Christmas decorations have become increasingly popular in China's big cities in recent years and the country's Christians traditionally decorate their houses with with beautiful paper lanterns and set up their ‘Trees of Light', with paper chains and flowers, while children hang stockings and await a visit from Dun Che Lao Ren ("Christmas Old Man“).
Christmas in Europe
- Christmas begins early in GERMANY with Saint Nicholas' Day, which is celebrated on December 6th. Saint Nicholas puts sweets and small gifts in children's shoes and is accompanied at public appearances by the frightening-looking “Knecht Ruprecht”, whose job is to look out for children who've been naughty all year.