Variety the world spice at Christmas

Press, 19 December 1985, Page 20

Variety the world spice at Christmas

Although the Yuletide message is the same, the way people celebrate Christmas differs from country to country, continent to continent, culture to culture. This Christmas season, foreign correspondents of the Associated Press were asked for reports on various Christmas traditions in the countries from which they report the news. These are their dispatches: AUSTRIA From Roland Prinz in Vienna Families gather around a decorated Christmas tree on Christmas Eve to sing Silent Night, Holy Night, the world’s most famous carol, composed in Austria 167 years ago. The music was by a schoolteacher, Franz Xaver Gruber, and the lyrics were written by the Reverend Josef Mohr, a village priest. Carp or other fish is eaten on Christmas Eve and the main course on Christmas Day is goose or turkey. In years past, only children received gifts, but now adults exchange gifts.

From Graham Heathcote in London Critics of British cooking maintain that Christmas is the only day of the year the country gets a decent meal. In millions of homes, dinner is roast turkey with chestnut stuffing in the neck end and sausage meat in the tail end, bread sauce (made with bread and cloves), roast potatoes and brussels sprouts, followed by plum pudding with brandy sauce, and mince pies. The rich, dark pudding, steamed for six or seven hours in a basin several weeks earlier and for two more hours on Christmas Day, is made of flour, spices, sugar, shortening, eggs, raisins, currants, almonds, fruit peel and black treacle. But no plums. Eating goes on all day: ham and tongue, trifle, chocolates, more mince pies, and fruit cake. Everyone hopes for a white Christmas but usually it rains. CHINA From Donna Anderson in Peking Thousands of Chinese Christians crowd into Peking’s St Mary of the Immaculate Conception Cathedral and other churches for midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. The churches are packed and many people travel for kilometres in the cold on bicycles or by other means,

to get to the services. The Christian “ churches were reopened after the Chinese Communist Cultural Revolution that ended in 1976.

Christmas is not celebrated by most Chinese but a few Christmas trees, ornaments and cards are available for sale to foreigners in Peking. CHINA-TAIWAN

From Wendel Chang in Taipei Christmas is a main holiday in Taiwan for Christians and non-Christians, with traditional gift-giving, Santas at stores and special Christmas sales at department stores.

Christmas also signals the approach of the lunar New Year, the most widely celebrated of all Chinese festivals. The lunar New Year will be celebrated on February 9. Taiwanese Christians, who number about a million of the island nation’s 19 million people, usually do not have major family gatherings at Christmas, but family reunions are a major part of the lunar New Year festivities. CZECHOSLOVAKIA From Iva Drapalova in Prague People clean their houses from top to bottom before Christmas, a tradition that goes back to pre-Christian times, when the dead were thought to come back to Earth, and everything had to be tidy to avoid making them angry. These days, the housecleaning is followed by a baking orgy, 10 to 14 different types of cookies are the rule. The traditional Christmas fare also includes carp netted in south Bohemian lakes in November and kept alive to be sold from huge barrels by street vendors. DENMARK From Frank Powley in Copenhagen Danes begin celebrating Christmas on the first Sunday of Advent with the lighting of candles placed around a wreath of pine sprigs. A candle is lit each Sunday during the four weeks before Christmas. The children of the household have a Christmas calendar, a long strip of embroidered cloth with a treat attached by a ribbon for each day leading up to Christmas Eve. Families gather on Christmas Eve for a dinner of goose or duck. But before the meal, everyone is served a bowl of rice boiled in milk. One almond is mixed in with the rice before it is portioned out. The family member who finds the almond in the bowl of Risengroed wins a prize. FRANCE From Paul Treuthardt in Paris Christmas is not only a time for giving in France but, as befits a gastronomic nation, a time for eating. Traditionally, the Christmas feast was an all-night affair starting after midnight Mass, but now it starts at 9pm or 10pm. Typically the meal will

start with oysters, caviar, smoked salmon and pate de foie gras. Sometimes lobster is included in those early courses. The main course may be turkey with chestnuts and a puree of celeriac (the celery root). That would be followed by a green salad with walnuts, a substantial cheese board, and the Buche de Noel, a rich cake decorated to resemble a Yule log. All of it will, in the French phrase, be well watered with champagne and fine wines. GERMANY From George Boehmer in Frankfurt The idea of Christmas trees is said to have started in Germany hundreds of years ago, and Germans keep up the tradition with fir or pine trees in their living rooms. The trees are decorated with white candles or lights shaped like candles. Ornaments are often beautiful hand-carved wooden likenesses of the Christ child, or a tiny crib. Little gingerbread men, candies and tinsel are also part of the tree decorations. The German Christmas season begins December 6, on St Nicholas Day, when gifts for children are placed in shoes or in stockings hung by the fireplace. . On Christmas Eve, the entire family exchanges gifts after singing Christmas carols. Families gather again Christmas Day for dinners of roast goose or duck, dumplings, red cabbage, gravies and a dessert of gingerbread.

From Stefan Fatsis in Athens Greeks in recent years have replaced decorated trees with models of ancient ships as their Christmas symbol. They select either the trireme, an ancient warship, or the caique, a traditional fishing vessel. The changeover from Christmas trees was encouraged by the Greek government in an effort to preserve the country’s forests.

The ships are displayed in windows and on mantels of households during the holiday season. Gifts or candy are placed in or around the

ships. The models have no real connection with Christmas but they symbolise Greece’s seafaring tradition and remind Greeks of sailors having to spend the holiday at sea. HONDURAS From Andrew Selsky in Tegucigalpa People of this bananagrowing country celebrate Christmas by eating fruit imported from the United States. The custom began a halfcentury ago when American banana companies, once the largest employer in Honduras, gave packages of apples and grapes as Christ-

mas bonuses to their workers. At Christmas time nowadays street vendors sell mounds of juicy red apples from Pennsylvania and plump purple grapes from California. ICELAND From Hjortur Gislason in Reykjavik Iceland has the equivalent of 13 Santa Clauses who, according to legend, are sons of trolls. In legend they were mischievous beggars and thieves, but in modern times they have been transformed into generous gift-givers who visit homes nightly during the 13 days before Christmas and leave small presents in shoes placed on window sills by children. The reason for leaving shoes on windows is that Icelanders’ homes have no chimneys for the Santa’s visits; they are heated by hot water from thermal springs. JAPAN From Terril Jones in Tokyo Christmas is not an official holiday in Japan, and less than 1 per cent of Japanese are Christian, but ornaments abound and Christmas carols — in English and Japanese — pour out of loudspeakers over busy street corners and

neighbourhood markets. Gifts are exchanged but mostly in the spirit of OSeibo, the traditional yearend offerings to benefactors, bosses and good customers. KENYA From James R. Peipert in Nairobi Christian missionaries brought Christmas to Africans last century and today it is the biggest family holiday in Kenya and throughout much of this

vast and diverse continent. The Swahili greeting, Nakutakia Krismas Ya Furaha, conveys the same wish of goodwill as the English equivalent — Merry Christmas. The biblical nativity story has even worked its way into the Muslim-dominated Swahili folklore of Kenya’s Indian Ocean coast. In one version a virgin, Maria, gives birth to a child under

a long dead date, tree, which suddenly blossoms. The child Isa grows up to be a great prophet. Many Kenyans save for as long as six months to buy a goat or a cow for slaughter and open-air roasting at a family reunion over Christmas, which is observed with church-going, gift-giving and carol-sing-ing. MEXICO From Isaac A. Levi in Mexico City Like almost everything else in Mexico, Christmas is celebrated with a mixture of'the new and the old; It includes Santa Claus, a wreath on the door and a tree with all its trimmings, as well as posadas, pinatas and mole sauce and guacamole to go with the turkey. The festivities begin December 16 with eight nights of neighbourhood posada parties, marking the week Joseph and Mary wandered from inn to inn, looking for a place where Jesus would be born. The pinata is a huge earthenware gourd filled with lollies and sweets, adorned with papier-mache to look like a star and hung from the ceiling. Blindfolded children stand under it, each swinging a big stick, until one of them breaks the gourd and spills out the goodies. For the Christmas turkey, cranberry sauce is replaced

by mole, a hot sauce made from ground chocolate, chili peppers, peanuts and spices. It is usually also served with a puree made of avocado called guacamole. PARAGUAY From Alfredo Seiferbeld in Asuncion Christmas of the cocotero flower, Christmas of Paraguay, carollers sing in this tiny South American country. The fragrant flower of the cocotero, a sub-tropical palm, blossoms in December during the southern hemisphere’s summer and is traditionally linked with the celebration of Christmas. It often is used to decorate the holiday dinner table, where families gather to feast on roast pig, cornbread, and other delicacies, washed down with clericot, a mixture of wine and fruit. SOUTH KOREA From K. C. Hwang in Seoul Christmas now is a national holiday and widely observed in South Korea, largely because American soldiers played Santa Claus to needy Koreans at the end of World War 11. Christian missionaries estabished a Christmas tradition in the last century, but Christianity was discouraged during 35 years of Japanese colonial rule from

1910 to 1945. The American Gls introduced the American way of celebrating Christmas to Koreans and today it is observed by Christians and non-Christians. RUSSIA From Andrew Rosenthal in Moscow From the tenth century until the communists took over in 1917, Christmas was the central holiday. Ded Moroz (Grandfather Frost), who looks like Santa Claus, and Snegurochka (the Snow Maiden) brought gifts to children. Those traditions have long been transferred to the New Year holiday, complete with decorated trees and presents. Although the Soviet Government fosters atheism, Christian religious services are held on January 7,

Christmas on the Russian Orthodox calendar. In late December, huge pine trees are decorated with lights, toys and tinsel in public places, and streets are festooned with holiday trim. The main tree of the country stands in the grand Kremlin palace in Moscow until January 11. URUGUAY From Daniel Gianelli in Montevideo The exploding Judas doll is an Uruguayan Christmas tradition. The doll, portraying the biblical betrayer of Jesus, is stuffed with pieces of newspaper, sawdust or rags — and fireworks. As children watch with delight, the doll is lighted and explodes in the street on Christmas Eve, as others shoot off their own firecrackers, small rockets and other incendiaries.