Flinders Street Station gets into the festive spirit

Christmas is being celebrated around the world today, with Melbourne and Sydney almost completely shut down for the public holiday.

The Tamil capital Chennai is also marking a public holiday today, with many of the city’s over 600,000 Christians attending church services. Christians account for approximately 7.6% of Chennai’s overall population.

An Australian Christmas pudding (Image: News Limited)

In Australia, Christmas is normally celebrated with the family unwrapping of gifts around the Christmas tree in the morning. A traditional Christmas lunch normally consists of a roast turkey or ham, while seafood is preferred in warmer climates. Christmas plum pudding served with brandy butter sauce finishes the spread, before a family game of cricket or swimming to escape the summer heat.

A contemporary Australian Christmas lunch, with its mix of traditional, hot European dishes and summery, locally sourced seafood and fruit. (Image: Taste.com.au)

Most Christmas trees in Australia have been hoisted and decorated for several weeks already, festive Christmas cards sent, and many suburban houses decorated with images of Santa Claus, or more commonly coloured flashing lights. Christians account for 64% of Melbourne’s 4.2 million citizens, and around half of Sydney’s 4.6 million-strong population.

Despite its official classification as a religious holiday, many Australians observe Christmas as secular and cultural festival focussing on family and gift-giving.

Christmas decorations in Santhome Basilica, Chennai

Meanwhile, in the subcontinent, Indian Christians commonly distribute sweets and deliver cakes to their neighbours, before enjoying a celebratory lunch or dinner with their family and friends.

Church services are an important part of Christmas celebrations in many cultures, with Catholics usually observing a ‘midnight mass’ at the stroke of twelve on Christmas Day.

The 25th December is also a public holiday in Pakistan to mark the birthday of Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah, founder of the modern Pakistani state. Lahore is home to around 700,000 Christians, who account for approximately 5.8% of the city’s population. Many of them are expected to flood into churches around the city after what has been a particularly tragic year for the Pakistani Christian community.

Pakistani Christians mark the occasion in a church in Lahore (Image: The Telegraph)

Christmas is marked by Christians worldwide as the date on which Jesus (pbuh) was born, however a close inspection of Christmas traditions reveals much cultural cross-pollination, with the date of December 25 arbitrarily set according to an early Roman calendar. Orthodox Christianity, common throughout much of eastern Europe, instead celebrates Christmas in line with the feast of Epiphany, on January 6.

UrbanDuniya wishes all of its readers a very Merry Christmas and a joy-filled festive season!