Christmas Day
Christmas is the season of joy, peace, and happiness. It is the special season set aside to
celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. Though this was its original purpose, the celebration of
Christmas has grown to become a symbolic time for living in peace and love. Christmas is
celebrated every year on the 25 th of December and is both a sacred religious holiday
and a worldwide cultural and commercial phenomenon.
The history of Christmas is one that dates to a very long time; the first Christmas that was
celebrated was in 336 in Rome. It played a very important role during the famed Arian controversy
that took place in the 300s. During the early years of middle age, epiphany overshadowed it.
Christmas was brought back to the limelight around 800 when the emperor Charlemagne received
the crown on Christmas day.
During the 17th century, the Puritans had Christmas banned because it was associated with
drunkenness and different other misbehavior. It was made a proper holiday around 1660 but was
still quite disreputable. Around the early 1900s, the Oxford movement of the Anglican Communion
church started and this led to the revival of Christmas. A lot of writers including Charles Dickens
did their best to reinvent Christmas by emphasizing it as being a period for family, gift-giving,
religion, and social reconciliation as against the historically common revelry it was known for.
Christmas is celebrated as a key festival in a lot of countries all over the world and some of the
countries are countries with a non-Christian population. In a lot of the non-Christian regions, the
celebration of Christmas is largely influenced by the colonial rule like in Hong Kong, in some other
regions; the celebration of Christmas is due to cultural influence of other foreign nations. There
are some countries where Christmas isn’t celebrated and there is no public holiday, examples of
such countries are Israel, Afghanistan, North Korea, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia,
Japan, China, Bhutan, Vietnam, Turkey, Libya, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, etc.
There are parades and religious processions in countries that are majorly catholic in the days
before Christmas. In regions that are largely secular, there are also parades that feature Santa
Claus and some other seasonal characters. A very important feature of Christmas all over the
world is the act of gift sharing and giving that takes place on the day of Christmas, there are a few
countries that practice the act of gift giving and gift sharing on January 6 and also on Saint
Nicholas’s Day.
There is the practice of special decorations being put up during Christmas and this practice has
a very long history. In London around the 15th century, it was the tradition for every home and
church building to be decorated with items that were judged to be green and worthy of the season
including ivy, holm, and bays. The colors traditional for Christmas are gold, red, and green. Red
is said to symbolize Jesus’ blood that he shed during the crucifixion, green stands for eternal life,
and especially the tree that is evergreen and doesn’t lose the leaves on it during winter, the very
first color associated with Christmas is gold as it was one of the gifts that the magi gave Jesus
and it symbolizes royalty.
A special family Christmas meal is also a very traditionally important feature of Christmas
celebrations, and the type of food served depends on the country and varies from region to region.
The United Kingdom with the countries that have been influenced by its culture and traditions has
a proper meal for Christmas that includes goose, turkey or any other big bird, potatoes, gravy,
bread, vegetables, and cider. There are also unique desserts that are prepared during Christmas
including Yule log cake, mince pies, Christmas pudding, and fruit cake. It is important to note that
in most eastern European countries like Poland and in Scandinavia, the main traditional course
is fish but there has been an increase in the use of richer meat like lamb.
Christmas card is greeting messages in form of illustrations that family members and friends
exchanges during the Christmas period. Traditionally, Christmas greeting cards were first
produced for commercial purposes in London around 1843 by Sir Henry Cole. Christmas is
probably the most beautiful time of the year with family, love, and gift giving the theme of the
season.