Christmas Traditions Around World

Posted on by Forest in General, Opinion

Interesting Christmas Traditions Around World

One of the interesting things about moving around a lot seeing customs you thought would be worldwide are actually quite local. In the sense of Christmas it varies quite a bit all around the world and you shouldn’t assume it is a straight forward always been the same celebration. Many of the US’s customs have been bended, twisted and borrowed from the UK but often have become more commercial. I think the US is the only place that uses the word Santa. In UK we call him Father Christmas and many countries say Saint Nicolas or believe in someone totally different.

The expats here in Egypt are just getting ready to celebrate a traditional USA / UK style Christmas but the Coptic Christian Egyptians don’t actually have their Christmas until January 7th.

Christmas Traditions Around World

There are some very interesting traditions from the world over and the site PotHarbour has some excellent info in this article. I have picked some of my favorite to share below.

Belgium

In Belgium they celebrate Saint Nicholas bringing presents. They believe he rides a horse so leave hay and carrots out for the horse on Christmas eve.

China

In China Santa is known as Dun Che Lao Ren and people decorate their homes with paper lanterns.

France

The French eat a midnight dinner on Christmas Eve and the adults have to wait until New Years to open presents, how unfair!!!!

Japan

In Japan they only really celebrate gift giving at Christmas. However I have heard largely through a mistake some families eat KFC on Christmas day as they think that is what American families do (Reportedly KFC made the claim in a 1992 Japanese advertising campaign).

Mexico

In Mexico Christmas lasts 9 days and of course there are Pinatas involved .

Spain

In Spain it is believed gifts are left by one of the wise men.

Sweden

The Swedes believe Santa (Tomte) is a Gnome who comes out from under the floor board bearing gifts….. Creepy!!!

These are only snippets of a few different beliefs and traditions from around the globe. As you can see Christmas varies greatly and from my understanding many of the European traditions are closer to the original celebrations many of which have pagan celebration origins and got mixed up and changed when Christianity spread across Europe….. Very interesting.

I hope you are having a great holiday and have lots of local traditional fun.

Tags: Christmas Celebrations Around World, Christmas Customs Around World, Christmas Eve, Christmas in Europe, Christmas Traditions Mexico, family christmas traditions