Christmas is an annual festival commemorating the birth of Jesus Christ, observed primarily on December 25 as a religious and cultural celebration among billions of people around the world. A feast central to the Christian liturgical year, it is preceded by the season of Advent or the Nativity Fast and initiates the season of Christmastide, which historically in the West lasts twelve days and culminates on Twelfth Night. Christmas Day is a public holiday in many countries, is celebrated religiously by a majority of Christians, as well as culturally by many non-Christians, and forms an integral part of the holiday season organized around it.  Read more..

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Many ancestral traditions relating to winter festivals are still alive among people from Moldova. Having very varied forms, they all involve a collective participation, especially of children, which gives the festival its joyful character. Traditionally, Christmas was associated in Moldova with the church, its celebration therefore being marked with a religious tint. Christmas was preceded by a Lent that many still respect today. As in winter the peasants were not too busy with traditional agricultural work, during the long evenings they devoted themselves to handicrafts, the women weaving, knitting, while the men braiding.. Read more..