The Christmas trees with their garlands and blinking lights, and the stockings waiting by the chimney for Santa Claus to arrive are Western, primarily American, additions to the Christmas story. Over the past two millennia, Christmas customs and traditions have mutated and metamorphosed so drastically as they have made their way across the globe, that they have become barely recognizable.
Perhaps most glaringly is the way in which Saint Nicholas, a humble workman from a city in Turkey called Myra, somehow transformed into the jolly Santa Claus with his reindeer sleigh arriving from the North Pole to deliver Playstations and Barbie dolls. For the Eastern Orthodox, it is not St Nicholas, but St Basil, who is remembered as the original Santa. Consequently, the Orthodox traditionally do not exchange gifts until the feast of Saint Basil on January 1st.
Likewise, the food served in the East during the feast is radically different from its Western counterparts. While roast turkey and glazed ham have become staples on the Christmas Eve table in the West, delicacies in Middle Eastern regions like Syria will include dishes like stuffed duck, baked kibby (meat mixed with bulgur), and stuffed cabbage leaves. In Lithuania, fish and poppy seed dishes are popular for Christmas Eve dinner, a meal during which twelve different dishes are traditionally served before the villagers leave their homes for Midnight Mass. Some of these dishes will include beet-root soup, pierogi (crepes filled with sauerkraut or mushrooms), stewed fruit, and a variety of cakes. Similarly, in Russia, Christmas Eve is marked by a twelve-course supper in honor of each of the twelve apostles. The dishes will include fish, Borsch, and cabbage stuffed with millet. In the Czech Republic, the father of the family will dip bread in honey and pass it out to all before starting the meal. Then the family sits down to a meal of freshwater fish carp. Fish is also served in Hungary for the Christmas Eve dinner, along with "beiglie," or soft-rolled cookies with walnuts and poppy seeds.
In contrast, the Greek Orthodox fast from both meat and dairy products in preparation for the communion that will be served during the Christmas liturgy very early on Christmas morning. On the feast day, Greek culinary traditions include stuffed poultry or pork, cabbage rolls- to symbolize the Christ Child in swaddling clothes- with syrupy sweets and sugar cookies. But two of the most notable Greek holiday foods are the country’s breads: the "Christopsomo," a skillfully decorated bread which is eaten on Christmas Day, and the "Vasilopita," (which translates to Saint Basil’s Bread), a sweet bread or cake in which is hidden a coin. On New Year’s Day the Vasilopita is cut into pieces and given out to family members and visitors. Of course, the one who finds the coin will be blessed with good luck the rest of the year!
For the most part in the Middle East, people who visit friends on Christmas morning will be offered coffee, liqueurs, and sugared almonds whereas Christmas dinner will most likely consist of chicken and rice, and "kubbeh," which is crushed bulgur mixed with meat, onion, salt and pepper. In Lebanon, villagers plant seeds, namely chickpeas, wheat grains, beans and lentils, in cotton wool. They water the seeds so that by Christmas morning the shoots are high enough to be used in the nativity scenes to surround the manger.
Although Bethlehem is the city where all of these traditions originated, it is also the city where all of the mutated, transformed traditions and customs converge. In fact, Bethlehem celebrates Christmas on three separate dates because of the differences of the calendars used by the Western Church (December 25th), the Orthodox Church (December 25th, or January 7th for the Russians) and the Armenian Church (January 6th). Each respective church celebrates a separate service in Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity, a structure in which a Silver Star marks the supposed location of Jesus' manger over 2,000 years ago.
