How other cultures celebrate Christmas

[Boyd Roberts]

Understanding other cultures and outlooks forms part of the IGC Award programme. Christmas is widely celebrated, and there are many local traditions and variations. Within the IGC Award, the aim is for students to go far beyond the study of quaintly different Fs of food, festivals, fashion. But, as many students look forward to celebrating festivals over the holiday period, perhaps they could spend a little time finding out about the celebrations others will be enjoying. Do they know, for instance, that there are at least two dates on which Christmas is celebrated around the world? And they could find out that Christmas is now being celebrated in countries with no Christian tradition, simply for general enjoyment.  

There are a number of websites where celebrations in a number of different countries are described, and links to a few are given below.

Students can check whether the descriptions of festivities and traditions in their own country are accurate, and perhaps find out what the websites say about celebrations and traditions in other countries.

Why Christmas. Com? Claims to be the biggest site on the Internet concerned with Christmas. Refreshingly, it does not accept any adverts. http://www.whychristmas.com/cultures/

Santa’s net also presents brief outlines of traditions in different countries. http://www.santas.net/aroundtheworld.htm .

(Students might consider why Latin America and Africa get one entry each, while lots of European countries have separate entries.)

http://tlc.howstuffworks.com/family/christmas-traditions-around-the-world-ga.htm also has descriptions of traditions in a few different countries.

For light relief have a look at 10 Wacky Christmas traditions on

http://disc.yourwebapps.com/discussion.cgi?disc=154052;article=29587