What Christmas traditions do you have in your country that has absolutely nothing to do with Christianity and the birth of Christ?

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1. A lot of Danish Christmas is thoroughly Christianised, and it’s hard to have a traditional Danish Christmas, without it being _explicitly_ a Christian Christmas, containing Christian or Christian_ised_ aspects. I’ll repeat that: You cannot celebrate a _traditional_ Danish Christmas, without it being an _explicitly_ Christian Christmas. The majority of traditions and rituals are simply too tied into Christianity, that it’s near impossible to do “traditional” without “Christian.” Personally, I’m currently in the middle of slowly divorcing Christmas and Christianity in my celebrations, but it sure is hard.

   However, we do have some aspects to Christmas, that are *relatively* untouched by Christianity. For example, as in other Scandinavian countries, the *nisse* has survived in folklore, and it is, obviously, hard to reconcile with Christianity, so people just didn’t bother. However, it is also a relatively recent thing, that *nissen* has become a specific Christmas-thing. The way Nissen survived in folklore, was as an everyday aspect of life, particularly in the countryside, as a sort of “house-spirit,” living on farms, and you needed to be on good terms with the *nisser,* otherwise they’d kill your livestock and destroy your crops. Nasty bastards, they were. However, if you befriended them, they would sometimes help you, giving you a particularly good crop or healthy animals, and so-on.

   Another “untouched” aspect is a lot of the decorations for the Christmas tree. As the Christmas tree entered into wider use among the Danish bourgeoisie, Denmark was in the middle of a period of extremely anti-German sentiment, following the two Schleswig wars. So to sort of “de-Germanize” the Christmas tree, it was instead militarised, with military drums, trumpets, figurines of soldiers, and the national flag. While traditional Danish Christmas ornaments also contain explicitly Christian imagery (the star of David at the top of the tree, angels, and so-on,) these particular (with the exception of the national flag which screams: “Christian God!”) ornaments are more militaristic than religious.

   A 3rd example could be, perhaps, be some of the songs we sing at Christmas. While there are ofc. pop song played on the radio, I’m here thinking of the Christmas songs we sing with our families, when walking/dancing around the tree. While the majority of them are Christian hymns, including the most popular ones, there is a good bunch of secular ones as well, such as [_Juletræet med sin pynt_](https://youtu.be/koQhGVhmtzY?si=dbG2ZYoiqy1GyIp0) and [Sikken voldsom trængsel og alarm](https://youtu.be/lEqJYGR_f3w?si=avQRIweb_w7ZGXSJ), which contain _no_ religious meanings at all.

   There was, in the beginning of the 19th century, a movement, spearheaded by the socialist movement, to create secular _Jule_-traditions (and generally break the bourgeois notions of what Christmas _should_ be like.) It sadly failed, and to this day, the traditional Danish Christmas continues to be in the same vein as the Christian-Bourgeois notions of Christmas from the 19th century. But simultaneously a lot of Danes, become defensive about this, and deny their Christmas any Christian content, and insist on it being merely “traditional,” as if those things could be separated. Add to this, we’re also living in an era, where there is more widespread acceptance of things “being the way things are,” and accepting, uncritically, traditions and status quo, passed down from dead generations. There is a certain irony to it, that the final lines of the second secular Christmas song I posted, is deeply conservative “Turn the universe all around; of all things make up be down; even Earth, as it is fake and hollow; just don’t touch, my Christmas holly”(My translation.)

2. A relatively modern tradition: Watching the Disney special [From All of Us to All of You](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_All_of_Us_to_All_of_You#Sweden). It’s the most watched show of the year, with 40-50 % of the population watch it each Christmas at 15:00. Most Swedes know all or part the dialogue and songs by heart.

3. We sauna on Christmas Eve. There’s usually a huge spike in electricity use at some point, when tens of thousands of saunas are turned on at the same time. (This is preceded by another electricity spike, as everybody cooks their Christmas ham.)

4. We have a tradition called “крещенские купания” (lit. “baptismal baths”), during which people dive into cold water outside (usually a big hole cut in a nearby frozen body of water, sometimes they even have scaffolds and railings to make it easier to get in and out of it). The idea is to dive into the water three times, making the sign of the cross each time, and that’s supposed to purge you of sin.

   This is a folk tradition at its roots, and not all clerics endorse it, while some even call it blasphemous. Still, It’s pretty much the only big Christmas tradition that we have.

   As for New Year’s Eve – the true counterpart to Western Christmas in Russia – there are plenty of non-Christian traditions, like eating tangerines and the Olivier salad or watching Soviet films (especially *The Irony of Fate*).

5. Well, I don’t know on what level it would fit, but people who celebrate new year here generally does it similarly to the Christmas traditions, with some even buying a whole turkey, which is like the thanksgiving ones.

   It is quite casual to see groups of friends or offices, school classes holding events to buy gifts for each other. Decorated trees and houses is just as common, with “Noel Baba” or Santa hats as such could be seen as well. This kind of tradition changes from region to region as well.

   The entire tradition is almost never linked with Christianity or Christ obviously too, as it is not celebrated at such time.

6. That date that Christmas is celebrated is a big part of it which has nothing to do with the birth of Jesus: it is taken from an old pagan celebration.

   The tradition of having Christmas decorations in the house, including having things like Christmas trees, wreaths and mistletoe, comes from pre-Chrisitan traditions as well. It was common then to bring green branches in to the house during the winter celebrations.

7. In Bosnia, wheat was spread around tables and sometimes even on tables and covered with an embroidered table cloth.

   Sarma, or sour cabbage rolls, has somehow become synonymous with Christmas.

   You shouldn’t sit at the corner of the table or else you won’t get married/die. I forget which one it is. Though this isn’t just for Christmas I guess.

8. Wassailing in Somerset / Devon of the uk – where people go and drink and sing and pour cider on apple trees in early January to hope they have good health and provide a good harvest in the next autumn.

   There are other versions in the uk, where people used to go door to door and “wassail” and be given food / drink by wealthy landowners which is what basically became door to door carol singers (we wish you a merry Christmas and the bring out the figgy pudding etc).