Christmas Around the World

What is Christmas?

Christmas, the festival of joy and sharing is celebrated around the world on 25th December every year. The actual preparation for Christmas starts many days in advance. The festival of carols, gifts and feasts is celebrated with great enthusiasm throughout the world.

Origin of Christmas

Christmas is a festival of joy, sharing and re-union. It is the festival of glittering decoration and food. Most importantly it is the festival of love. Every Year this festival is celebrated on 25th December to mark the birth of Jesus Christ. The word Christmas is derived from the Middle English ‘Christemasse’ and old English ‘Cristes maesse’. The world ‘Cristes’ is from Greek ‘Christos’ and ‘maesse’ is from Latin. According to history, Christmas was celebrated some 4000 years ago. Many of the festive traditions were celebrated much before the birth of Jesus Christ. It began with the twelve day New Year celebration of Mesopotamians. This festival was called ‘Zagmuth’. It was celebrated to defend their god ‘Marduk’ in a battle with the devils. Christmas is believed to have originated from this festival. The Persians and Babylonians also celebrated a similar festival called the Sacaea. During this feast slaves became the masters and masters had to obey their slaves. The Romans also celebrated a festival called `Saturnalia` in the middle of December until the first of January to honor their God Saturn. As a tradition, the Romans used to exchange gifts, hold feasts and decorate their homes to bring good luck in their life and thus worshiped nature’s forces like the Sun.