Christmas is celebrated by about one third of the worlds population. This being said, the classic traditions vary from continent to continent, even country to country. We took a closer look at how some of the greatest places on earth celebrate this wonderful day.

Lets start at home, the United States. Our country has so many different regions that it is hard to just pick one way that the country celebrates it. In the great city of Boston, people celebrate by going to church on Christmas Eve. You can also find carolers singing on the streets or in shopping plazas. It would not be surprising if hand bells accompanied the singers.

In Hawaii, Christmas starts with the coming of the Christmas Tree Ship, which is a ship that is filled with Christmas goodies. Santa Claus can be found arriving by sea as well!

England

Moving into Europe, one of England's customs is mummering. In the Middle Ages, people called mummers put on masks and acted out Christmas plays. These plays are still performed in towns and villages today. 

The English gift giver is called Father Christmas. He wears a long red or green robe, and leaves presents in stockings on Christmas Eve. However, the gifts are not usually opened until the following afternoon.

France

In France nearly every home at Christmas time displays a Nativity scene or crèche, which serves as the focus for the Christmas celebration. The crèche is often peopled with little clay figures called santons or “little saints.” In addition to the usual Holy Family, shepherds, and Magi, the craftsmen also produce figures in the form of local dignitaries and characters. The craftsmanship involved in creating the gaily colored santons is quite astounding and the molds have been passed from generation to generation since the seventeenth century. Throughout December the figures are sold at annual Christmas fairs in Marseille and Aix.

Gremany

In Germany, Christmas preparations often begin on the eve of December 6th. People often set aside special evenings for baking spiced cakes and cookies, and making gifts and decorations. Little dolls of fruit are traditional Christmas toys.

Germans make beautiful gingerbread houses and cookies. The German Christmas tree pastry, Christbaumgeback, is a white dough that can be molded into shapes and baked for tree decorations.

In parts of Germany, people believe that the Christ Child sends a messenger in Christmas Eve. He appears as an angel in a white robe and crown, bearing gifts. The angel is called Christkind. There is also a Christmas Eve figure called Weihnachtsmann or Christmas Man, he looks like Santa Claus and also brings gifts.

Italy

In Italy the Christmas  celebration starts as a strict feast, which is observed for 24 hours before Christmas Eve, and is followed by a celebration meal, in which a light Milanese cake called panettone is featured, as well as an assortment chocolate.

At noon on Christmas Day the pope gives his blessing to crowds gathered in the huge Vatican square.

Russia

In Russia the religious festival of Christmas is being replaced by the Festival of Winter but there are some traditions that are still kept up in some parts of the country.

On Christmas Day, hymns and carols are sung. People gather in churches which have been decorated with the usual Christmas trees or Yelka, flowers and colored lights.

Babushka is a traditional Christmas figure who distributes presents to children. Her name means grandmother and the legend is told that she declined to go with the wise men to see Jesus because of the cold weather. However, she regretted not going and set off to try and catch up, filling her basket with presents. She never found Jesus, and that is why she visits each house, leaving toys for good children.

Lebanon

About two weeks before Christmas people in Lebanon and elsewhere in the Middle East plant seeds – chickpeas, wheat grains, beans, lentils – in cotton wool. They water the seeds every day and by Christmas the seeds have shoots about 6 inches in height. People use the shoots to surround the manger in nativity scenes. Figures are made from brown paper, as well a star is placed above the scene.

Traditionally throughout the Middle East people visit friends on Christmas morning and are offered coffee, liqueurs and sugared almonds. Lunch at Christmas is the most important meal of the season and the whole family gathers together for it, usually at grandparents or the eldest sons' home. The meal consists of chicken and rice, and Kubbeh, which is made up of crushed boiled wheat or burghul mixed with meat, onion, salt and pepper.

Indonesia

At the beginning of December most Indonesians decorate their homes, inside and out. The Christmas Tree is an important tradition inside the house, where it is covered in everything form strings of popcorn to glass bulbs.

The day before Christmas most people go to their local church for a Christmas Eve service. After the service families get together to celebrate Christmas with a large dinner.

Some families give presents to the ones they love on Christmas day. Again, some families will have a small service in their home where stories are shared, and then a larger church service is attended. After church is a time to visit with friends and family, sharing the joy of the Christmas season.

Brazil

One tradition is to create a nativity scene or Presépio. The word originates from the Hebrew word “presepium” which means the bed of straw upon which Jesus first slept in Bethlehem. The Presépio is common in northeastern Brazil. Nowadays presépios are set up in December and displayed in churches, homes, and stores.

Papai Noel or Father Noel is the gift-bringer in Brazil. According to legend, he lives in Greenland. When he arrives in Brazil, he usually wears silk clothing due to the summer heat.

Devout Catholics often attend Midnight Mass or Missa do Galo. The mass has this name because the rooster announces the coming day and the Missa do Galo finishes at 1 AM on Christmas morning! On December 25th, Catholics go to church, but the masses are mostly late afternoon, because people enjoy sleeping late after the dinner called Ceia de Natal or going to the beach.

No matter where you are or how you celebrate Christmas, we here at Koo think it is amazing. It is the same holiday with the same spirit yet, it is so different all over the world. We have learned so much from these cultures and for that we thank them! From our home to yours, we wish you a happy and safe holiday season! 

You can find all of the information we used about the various celebrations and much much more at http://www.santas.net/. 

Rosalyn Driscoll is the newest exhibitor on Koo de Monde. Her work and her medium is very unique, nothing like we have seen before. We just had to find more about her and her work! One of our curators, Georgia, got the chance to sit down and ask Rosalyn a few questions. Her answers are very deep and it gives a whole new perspective on her work.

G: Have you always been an artist?

R: Yes, I could say I've always been an artist, even including the years around college when I studied art history and worked as curatorial assistant at the Yale University Art Gallery, where my intimate, hands-on relations with artworks fed into my future work in sculpture and the sense of touch.

G: How did you begin creating your pieces?

R: My first efforts were in painting, but I grew frustrated with the flat impermeability of the canvas and turned to handmade paper, which allowed me to submerge my hands in the pulp and make images from the inside. Then I began making books, which led to a growing curiosity about touch as a way to know artworks.
The body has always been central to my work, first as a subject in painting—the body as seen from the outside; then as the source of imagery in the paper works—the body as felt from the inside; then as an actor in my tactile work—the body as sensitive perceiver.

G: You focus on tactile and multi-sensory work….tell us why and what is the inspiration behind it.

R: My fascination with touch grew out of years of exploring my own bodily experience through various somatic disciplines (movement, Rolfing, meditation, etc). Much later I realized the knowledge I had acquired could be applied to the experience of art. I began to wonder: how does the body figure in the encounter with art? How could someone come to know a work of art through the body?

To begin answering these questions, I spent a year visiting art museums with a woman who had lost her sight soon after art school. Then I began to make tactile sculpture, focusing on creating pieces that people could actually touch. Over time, my understanding of touch has broadened and deepened to include visceral, emotional, proprioceptive responses evoked by what we see.
As we embrace increasingly disembodying technologies, this multi-sensory approach gains a purpose and urgency that transcends art. I want to remind people they live in bodies, which are the most profound meeting place of culture and nature.

G: You use an unusual variety of materials such as hide and rope: what is the process usually like?

R: I choose materials for their strong physical presence and expressive qualities. I stockpile objects and materials in the studio, and something catches my eye as a solution or an element for a piece. Materials speak to us, and to each other, in direct, powerful ways.

I began to use rawhide after working for years in obdurate materials such as steel, stone and wood.  I wanted a material that could take organic forms but still support itself, and was drawn to its rough beauty and its meaning as skin. It arrives from the stockyard soft and malleable then, dries hard into the forms I give it. I have to negotiate with the natural forces within the skin as it shrinks and curls, remaining animal even as it transforms into sculpture.

G: You have collaborated with neuroscientists and have shown your work at MIT and Brown University…fill us in!

R: From the very beginning of the tactile work, I considered what I was doing as research, since nothing was known about touch in art. I set about learning from every possible source, especially people who engage with my work, but also psychologists, engineers, neuroscientists and philosophers who are investigating touch and perception. These connections led me into worlds beyond art and enriched my perspective.

I'm also conducting another kind of research with a French philosopher who does in-depth interviews of people who engage with my sculptures, as a way to better understand the multi-sensory aesthetic experience. These interviews are incredibly rich and expressive, providing material to explore in the next exhibit, where we will conduct more interviews, which will lead to the next exhibit, and so on, in a wonderful cycle of feedback and feedforward.

G: Have you already thought about your next series?

R: I'm currently collaborating with a neuroscientist at Brown University to make sculpture that is also scientific experiment, which explores the dynamic relationship of sight and touch, and will include rawhide, video and EEG. We’re considering using people’s brainwaves to shape the unfolding narrative of the video.

G: You also have an audience in the UK and have just returned from Edinburgh. What did you do there and how did you develop those connections abroad?

R: My links to the UK evolved from presenting my work at a conference on touch and sculpture at the Courtauld Institute in London and simultaneously meeting through the internet a Czech film-maker studying at the Royal College of Art in London.

One thing led to another, and I'm now a member of an international collective of artists committed to making and exhibiting multi-sensory, embodied art. The collective, called Art in Touch, consists of myself, the Czech film-maker, an American ceramicist working in London, a French textile artist working in Paris and London, and an English writer living on the English coast. We created a collaborative installation, Just Under the Surface, in the Crypt Gallery in London last spring. My rawhide sculptures lay on the stone floors of the Crypt, representing the rivers of Hades, the Greek underworld.
I was awarded a month-long residency at Dartington Hall Trust in Devon to make sculptures for the installation in the Crypt. My work there was inspired by the garden at Dartington and the English attitude toward their land and trees.

My recent trip to Edinburgh was to install at the University of Edinburgh a sculpture-video piece in an exhibit called SensoryWorlds, which accompanied a conference that considered the awakening of the senses as a useful response to the environmental crisis.

G: Where would you like to expand next?

R: Moving out of the classic, spare gallery space into the richly sensory atmosphere of the crypt was revelatory; half our work was done by the place itself. The addition of light and sound opened new avenues for sensory experience. The collective is now scouting in Edinburgh and Paris for unusual sites to create more such multi-sensory, collaborative installations.

Rosalyn was very gracious to give us the time to ask all of our questions. We have learned a lot about her process and how she got started. Rosalyn is such a talented artist and we are so excited to get to know her better. She has taught us to not only look at her works but to take them in as a whole sensory experience, for that we thank her!