Christmas Bells Jingle For the Love That Started In Syria

Every year people stop at time – stations in which they celebrate social or religious events that remind them of the values of love and righteousness, of social unity and solidarity. Syria celebrates several of these events: Eid alFitr,(Lesser Bairam) which comes after Ramadan, the holy month of fasting, Eid alAdha (The Greater Bairam), a holy Eid (feast), which comes after the Hajj season (pilgrimage to Mecca) of Moslems as well as the Christmas, the New Year and Easter.

People celebrate each one of these feasts in a certain way at the religious level and at the social level. Most important is that all people participate in them, so, these events became part of the traditions and social life of all the Syrians, Moslems as well as Christians. These days we celebrate the Christmas and the New Year. Bells jingle to remind us of the coming feast. Christmas trees stand in rooms and balconies. Coloured lights glitter on balconies and trees of the streets. People fill the bustling markets buying new clothes, gifts and sweets. Churches receive thousands of people who come to pray to God the almighty, hoping that the New Year will bring them peace, prosperity and joy.

Traditional feasts

Visiting kins, relatives and friends is a distinctive practice of the festivities in Syria. People usually avail holy opportunities to renew their ties with each other. Families meet, dine, sing, dance and spend long hours together. Restaurants and night clubs open until the early hours of the next day. Children usually receive, in addition to gifts, some money from, nearly, every adult member in the family, so they can go to restaurants, fast food shops and recreational parks, to spend the day. Some families, if the weather is good, go in picnics around the city or in tours around the country. Easter, which always comes in spring, was a traditional picnic day for all the Syrians. People used to go to parks and orchards carrying baskets of colored Eggs, in addition to their food, hide the eggs among the trees and the grass, and ask children to look for them. The winner is the child who finds more eggs than the others. Hence that day was called the “Day of Eggs.

Christmas festivities

Since Syria was the birth place of civilizations and religions, it was the central starting point from where Christianity and Islam spread all over the world and the Syrian feasts became feasts celebrated all over he world. Because Jesus Christ was born on this land, the day of his birth ,(the 25th.of December, according to the Roman calendar, and the of January according to the Greek Church),became the greatest event in history, became a universal holiday .In that day Chirrups sang the well known hymn; “Glory to God in the high heavens, and peace on earth to those with whom He is pleased.1 .In this occasion Syrians reenact the birth of Christ in the churches and in their homes by building caves, with Jesus the child, the lambs, and the birds, symbols of peace and simplicity, inside them . String lights are wound on trees to draw wonderful designs that glitter and change the dark winter nights into a carnival of lights and colors. They have Christmas trees of different sizes and shapes in rooms and balconies with coloured balls, toys and stars suspending from them. In the morning of the Christmas day children wake up and look for the gifts Santa Clause brought during the night and hanged them on the trees assimilating verses of the Holy Quran: “And shake towards thyself the trunk of the palmtree it will let fall fresh ripe dates upon thee.2. The New Year’s day was chosen as the start of the calendar year in 532 AD bythe Romans. Historian monk Axigus was looking for an important episode in human history to compute time according to it. He couldn’t find an event more important than the birth of Christ in Syria. Since that time historians adopted that date and started to chronologize events either before it (BC), or after it (AD). Later the whole world considered it a main station of time, from where people say “good bye“ to a passing year, and “welcome“ to a new year with joy ,pessimism and well wishes. As for tourism, we see it urgent to facilitate tourist trips in these days and to encourage people to tour their country and explore the beautiful places in it. The same could apply to Arab and foreign tourists who prefer to spend the holiday touring holy places and tourist destinations. An integral plan could be considered by the ministries of tourism, information, culture and transportation to activate tourism in this season and to reveal the real civilized Syria, and ,at the same time ,to trigger tourist activity and increase labour opportunities. The “Tourist Guide. magazine avails this opportunity to congratulate its readers, the Syrians in Syria and every where in the world ,the tourists who preferred to spend their holidays in Syria, and all the peoples of the world, wishing them a “Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year”

1-St. Luke . Genesis 2, verse 14.

2-The Holy Quran. Sura 19,Aya 25.

Haifa Mafalani