Winter is the best season in the whole year, in my opinion.We have holiday, we have CHRISTMAS, we have the new year party and whole lots of present to receive from our family and our friends.
Christmas in Ireland
St. Stephen’s Day is celebrated in Ireland in a different way, but is similar to Boxing Day in that it also has to do with the solicitation of money. Young men is extravagant dress, sometimes wearing masks, parade noisily through the streets in the Wren Boys’ Procession. They carry long pole on top of which is attached a holly bush. The bush supposedly contains a captured wren, and for whose sake the young men beg for money.
X-mas in India
Christians in India decorate mango or banana trees at Christmas time. Sometimes they also decorate their houses with mango leaves. In some parts of India, small clay oil-burning lamps are used as Christmas decorations; they are placed on the edges of flat roofs and on the tops of walls. Churches are decorated with poinsettias and lit with candles for the Christmas Evening service
X-mas in South America
Throughout South America Christmas is celebrated in a deeply religious way. The main focus of the season throughout the continent is the presepio (“the manger”). Often a whole room is devoted to the presepio display, complete with landscape and tiny figures made to scale. Though the central feature is the manger at Bethlehem, elaborate scens will include hills full of shepherds gazing upon the heavenly host, the Wise Men crossing the desert on their camels, water mills, grottos, electric trains, and even sailboats on the sea.
X-mas in Portugal
Christmas is celebrated in much the same way in Portugal as it is in Spain. The Portugese enjoy an additional feast, called consoada, in the early morning hours of Christmas Day. They set extra places at the table for alminhas a penar (“the souls of the dead”). In some areas crumbs are left on the hearth for these souls, a custom that derives from the ancient practice of entrusting seeds to the dead in hopes that they will provide a bountiful harvest.
X-mas in Japan
The story of the Child Jesus born in a manger is fascinating to the little girls of Japan, for they love anything having to do with babies. In the scene of the Nativity they become familiar for the first time with a cradle, for Japanese babies never sleep in cradles.
Many western customs in observing Christmas have been adopted by the Japanese. Besides exchanging gifts they eat turkey on Christmas Day, and in some places there are even community Christmas trees. They decorate their houses with evergreens and mistletoe, and in some homes Christmas carols are sung gaily.
In Japan there is a god or priest known as Hoteiosho, who closely resembles our Santa Claus. He is always pictured as a kind old man carrying a huge pack. He is thought to have eyes in the back of his head. It is well for the children to be good when this all-seeing gentleman is abroad.
New Year’s Day is the most important day of the whole calendar in Japan. On New Year’s Eve the houses are cleaned thoroughly from top to bottom, and are decorated for the morrow. when everything has been made clean and neat the people of the house dress themselves in their finest clothes. Then the father of the household marches through the house, followed by all the family, and drives the evil spirits out. He throws dried beans into every corner bidding the evil spirits withdraw and good luck enter.
It doesn’t matter how it’s celebrated. X-mas symbolizes the same thing and it brings the same joy in our hearts, no matter where are we from.