Christmas-ln Various Lands.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 237, 22 December 1916, Page 3 (Supplement)

Christmas-ln Various Lands.

THE OLDEST CHRISTIANS IX THE WORLD.

Now that Bagdad, the famous city ot

'•The Arabian eights' Entertainment," is so much before the public eye, it s interesting to know that there are in this quaint city seven or eight thousand Chrisian Chaldeans —the oldest Christians in the world. A writer in

"The. Challenge'' tells how these Christians give honour to Christmas. The Christian Chaldeans (he writes) do not spent Christmas Eve in the gaiety of the coffee shops, for seven churches of the Christian faith, hold special Christmas Eve. services conducted by the priests, including that attended by the European colony. Again at dawn on Christmas Day the better part <n the Chaldeans assemble. The chants, the sermon, and the prayers are in Arabic, and when they sing of Hoses they call it "Musa," and Joseph "Yusur," and so on. Little Chaldean boys make up the choir, and the venerable priests are all gorgeous in fine linen and gold embroidery. The service over, the Clialdcans and their womenfolk return to their houses. Here, usually in ■x room on the second storey, the Christian Chaldeans partake of their Christmas dinner, without turkey and mincepie and plum-pudding, but with the inevitable and traditional roast lamb stuffed with plums, rice in various forms, and stacks of cakes of native bread, thin, unlevaened, and fresh from the oven. 'There are many other dishes, including the inevitable one or dates, which are served in many ways; milk, cream, butter or cheese being the usual accompaniment. Of course, the nioul is preceded and followed by coffee —real Arabic coffee, from the Yemen is South Arabia. Then, afterwards, the tale-teller is introduced. He recounts many of the legends and traditions of Christmas Day and of the Chaldean race, but most of all does he relate the native fables which have grown up round the Birth in the Manger.

CHRISTMAS GEOGRAPHY. Cluistmas lias its geography as well as its festivity, and, curiously enough, most of the* place names associated with the name are far from cheerful There are three Christmas Islands, one ;in the Pacific, covered with guano, which Captain Cook discovered on Christmas Day; one in the Indian Ocean, forest-covered, and having a population of about forty, and another on the ice-bound coast of Cape Breton. There is a Christmas Cove, which sounds inviting, and, as a matter of fact, is a seaside resort on the coast of Maine, U.S.A.; a Christmas Harbour, ii. Kerguelen Land, a haunt of seals, and a Christmas Sound, amid the stormy seas around Cape Horn. But Natal* "the garden of South Africa,'' also has the Christmas association?, m that it is so-called because one Vasco :.'a Gama. a Portuguese navigtor, di=ccvered it on Dor. 20, 1497. MISTLETOE AND HOLLY. Kissing under the mistletoe is a characteristic English custom, and perhaps may he a survival of the licence often permitted at folk-festivals. In the inns ti Lower Austria and the Alps thera lingers a custom akin to the Englis.i kissing under the mistletoe. People stay late in the inns on New Year's Eve, the walls and windows being decorated with pine twigs. an d a wreath of the same greenery hanging from the centre of the roof. In a dark corner hides a masked figure known as "Sylvester," old and ugly, with a flaxen beard and a wreath of mistletoe. If a youth or • maiden happens to pass under the pine wreath. Sylvester springs out and imprints a rough kiss. When r.:idnight comes he is driven out as the representative of the Old Year. Holly m England seems always to have par-t-ikon of something of the saoredness c.t' the mistletoe' 1 . In Northumberland it w;.s ustd for divination. Nine leaves are tied with nine knots into a handkerchief, and put under the piilow of r. person who desires prophetic dreams.