The Christmas traditions from Sweden to Jamaica

The Christmas traditions from Sweden to Jamaica

By Mehru Jaffer

JAKARTA (JP): Come December and most shops are dressed up like
a bride. From behind window panes packed with snow flakes or
balls of cotton wool, Christmas trees both real and fake twinkle
with colorful lights from a thousand bulbs, and are decorated
with ornaments that glitter.

Sound systems everywhere play traditional Christian songs,
while festive winds blowing around the globe connect people from
Jakarta to Jamaica as the holiday season seems to hit all of
humanity. Today it is possible to say merry Christmas in over a
100 languages.

However not everyone is charmed by Christmas. "Commercialism
follows me where ever I go. Even here in Jakarta, everything is
so artificial. I do not believe in putting pressure upon people
to condense their goodness in one month during Ramadan or at
Christmas. I believe in being good all the year round," says Luis
Ruiz Arbeloa, economic and commercial counselor at the embassy of
Spain. The counselor is making almost reluctant preparations to
fly to Madrid for a forced family reunion to celebrate the birth
of Jesus Christ to whom he has not prayed ever since he left
university nearly three decades ago.

"And I am not taking any presents for anyone," was Arbeloa's
parting remark.

Despite the Spanish counselor's nonreligious and
anticommercial views, most children in Spain will once again fill
up their shoes with straw and wait for the Three Wise Men,
especially Balthazar, to leave presents for them.

For it is not Santa who doles out gifts in Spain but
the Three Wise Men who legend says passed through the country on their
way to Bethlehem, the birthplace of Christ.

Santa, the human face of Christmas is actually Nicholas, a
Christian leader from Myra in Turkey who lived in the fourth
century AD.

He was so shy about helping others that one day he climbed the
roof of a house and dropped a purse of money down the chimney
that landed in the stocking of a girl who had put it by the fire
to dry. And the rest of the Santa story, as they say, is history.

Back in Spain the spectacle of bonfires will once again be
observed when crowds will hold their breath as people leap over
shooting flames, in symbolic protection against illness.

And the feasting at Christmas Eve will be interrupted for a
while when bells chime at midnight to announce The Mass of the
Rooster. The most moving of all candlelight services is held at
the monastery of Montserrat, high in the mountains near Barcelona
and highlighted by a boy's choir singing in one, pure voice.

In Japan, Santa is called Kurohsu and it is little girls who
are most excited about the birth of Christ as they love
everything about babies.

Christmas became popular after the Japanese began making
products for the festival for other countries. Today one of the
most popular Christmas decorations in Japan is the origami swan.
Christianity is not allowed in China, but about one percent of
the population is said to be baptized, some of whom celebrate
Christmas by attending the midnight mass and decorating
artificial trees, called "trees of light", in upscale apartments.

In fact Christmas was once a movable feast celebrated many
times during the year in different parts of the world in the
worship of light, or the sun. It was the Pope in the fourth
century AD who replaced Dec. 25, a day of pagan rituals
concerning the Return of the Sun with the Christian one.

Before Christianity the Swedish people celebrated Christmas as
mid-winter-blood with both animal and human sacrifices, appealing to the
gods to release man from winter's cruel grip. It remains the biggest and
longest holiday of the year when, according to tradition, Swedes
make the trek to church, often by horse-drawn sleighs in the
early hours of Christmas morning.

As food was scarce in the winter months, the entire
celebration revolved around feasting with family and friends,
like it does in Poland even today. In rural areas the Polish
still believe that Christmas Eve is a night of magic when animals
talk and people have the power to tell the future.

In eastern Poland, in just one of the many ceremonies, girls
grind poppy seed in the hope of a quick marriage.

Getoniu Stere, 38, will not return to Romania for the holiday
this year and nor will his ambassador. "We will stay in Jakarta
and have our tree, exchange gifts among 25 other Romanians and
feast together on our traditional cuisine, although there will be
no slaughtering of the pig on Christmas, a ritual preserved by us
since ancient times," Stere told The Jakarta Post. Stere has put
up pictures at the embassy of the snow-clad celebrations in
Romania to remind the staff of their mountainous home.

"I would be most displeased if for whatever reason I could not
celebrate Christmas in Prague," said Milan Sarapalka, ambassador
of the Czech Republic.

His wife and 12-year-old daughter have already left, and he
looked forward to joining them a day after he spoke to this
reporter. Unlike Asian families who are together all year round,
Christmas is the only occasion when Sarapalka's family meets with
each other.

Besides, he cannot imagine a Christmas without real snow and
this is also the only time in the year when he visits the family
church. The exchange of gifts is a symbol of peace and
reconciliation with each other.

The Czechs like to have their traditional feast of fish soup,
carp and potato salad at about 6 pm, while the Spanish do not eat
until midnight, a habit they took with them also to their
different colonies.

It was just six years after they arrived in Mexico that the
first Mass of the Rooster was held at midnight and it quickly
became very popular with the newly converted Indians.

To the already existing fiestas for the God of the Sun, local
customs like fireworks, fruit punch and Indian dancing was added
to please the Aztec Indians, traditions that continue to this
day. Most Mexicans spend the last two weeks of December with the
family and partying, while Christmas Day itself is an unearthly
quiet day with everyone asleep and recovering from the night-long
drinking and dancing of the previous evening.

In Hawaii, Christmas trees are delivered in refrigerated
containers. If the island's limited supply of the grand fir tree
runs out, the locals think nothing of decorating a palm tree for
Christmas, while in Jamaica walls and tree roots are white-washed
with temper lime using beaten banana stalks.

Grand markets in town squares play the rumba-box, guitar and
saxophone, and after many rides on donkeys and the merry-go round
people attend church and wear hats. It is important to make sure
that all the elderly receive their special meal of rice and peas,
along with home-made duck bread, convincing everyone that there
is after all a little more to Christmas than just shopping.