8 Christmas traditions from around the world

15.11.2023 - 22:49 / lonelyplanet.com

Ever wondered who first decided to bring trees inside to celebrate Christmas? Or where advent calendars first originated from? Keep reading...

We’ve tracked some popular festive traditions – as well as some lesser-known ones – back to their roots.

Advent, which derives from the Latin word adventus, meaning “coming,” is the period beginning four Sundays before Christmas. In the 19th century, German Protestants counted down the days to Christmas by marking 24 chalk lines on a door and rubbing one off every day in December. Paper Advent calendars became popular in Germany in the early 20th century.

Gerhard Lang is thought to have been the first to mass-produce them, inspired by a calendar his mother had made for him as a child. He later came up with the idea for cardboard calendars with doors that could be opened. They became a commercial success, but it wasn’t until the late 1950s that Advent calendars included chocolate.  During today's Christmas season, you can see giant Advent calendars on building facades in many European towns and cities. Hattingen in North Rhine-Westphalia and Bernkastel-Kues in Moselle Valley, both in Germany, have some pretty examples, as does Innsbruck, Austria.

Pagan Europeans would bring a fir tree into the home during the winter solstice. Tree worship was common, and they would also decorate a living tree outdoors with candles and ornaments symbolizing the sun, moon and stars on the tree of life. In Scandinavia, people decorated their homes and barns with greenery for New Year to ward off evil. Since evergreens symbolize eternal life, greenery helped Europeans visualize the spring to come.

It’s not known exactly when Christians began to use fir trees as Christmas trees, but the cities of Tallinn in Estonia and Riga in Latvia lay claim to the first documented use of a public tree at Christmas and New Year celebrations.

On December 7 Colombia honors Mary, the mother of Jesus, and the Feast of the Immaculate Conception with Noche de las Velitas (Night of the Little Candles), an enchanting celebration that marks the start of the holiday season. Colombians light up their homes and streets with millions of white and colored velas (candles) in patterned paper lanterns. The Night of the Little Candles was once a small-scale, family-centric affair, but over the years the decorations have become more creative and sophisticated, and electric lights are often used. Celebrations have become increasingly public too, with music and fireworks as well as food markets. 

You can see something similar in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in the beloved Christmas Eve Farolito Walk up Canyon Road. Here the tradition calls for simple paper bags filled with a bit of sand and a tealight.

The Christmas story tells us