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The pre-Christian Germanic peoples—including the Anglo-Saxons and the Norse—celebrated a winter festival called Yule, held in the late December to early January period, yielding modern English yule, today used as a synonym for Christmas. [109]
The abbreviation of Christmas as Xmas is a source of disagreement among Christians who observe the holiday. The December 1957 News and Views published by the Church League of America , a conservative organization co-founded in 1937 by George Washington Robnett, [ 21 ] attacked the use of Xmas in an article titled "X=The Unknown Quantity".
Christmas has been celebrated since at least the 4th century CE, the first known usage of any Christmas greeting dates was in 1534. [72] " Merry Christmas and a happy new year " (thus incorporating two greetings) was in an informal letter written by an English admiral in 1699.
Christmas in Poland is celebrated with gift-giving, church services, and fasting on Christmas Eve before a 12-dish feast, which usually features carp for good luck.. Most people simply buy a cut ...
Some folks in the UK celebrate Christmas with pantomime, a campy, family-friendly theater show. Christmas pudding, a popular holiday dessert in the UK, is probably unfamiliar to most Americans.
In fact, the word Christmas comes from Cristes maesse, Old English for “Christ’s Mass,” which references the Catholic tradition of holding a special mass ceremony to celebrate Jesus. The ...
Yule is a winter festival historically observed by the Germanic peoples that was incorporated into Christmas during the Christianisation of the Germanic peoples.In present times adherents of some new religious movements (such as Modern Germanic paganism) celebrate Yule independently of the Christian festival.
A century later, on Christmas Day 1914, Allied and German troops staged an impromptu cease-fire during World War I to mark the spirit of Christmas. Christmas is celebrated today even in non ...