Christmas Across the World

Holidays Across the World:
With the holiday season quickly approaching, everyone on my tour bus found themselves talking about the way they celebrate big holidays such as Christmas. They were all intrigued by the idea of Thanksgiving and asked me questions like "does anyone throw up after eating all of that food?" and "do the same teams play in the gridiron match every year?" Gridiron is the common term for American Football in other parts of the world. Here is what I found out about other countries Christmas celebrations:

- Norway: Usually a neighbor dresses up like Santa Claus and brings presents to the kids during the afternoon on Christmas Eve
- Switzerland: An angelic female (not Santa) brings the kids gifts while the kids are asleep the night before X-Mas. They also celebrate St. Nicolas Day on Dec. 6th like the Dutch
- Holland: Saint Nicolas comes down through the chimney and gives the kids gifts.. on Dec. 6th. Three weeks later they celebrate Christmas by receiving gifts from their family. Saint Nicolas comes to the house on horseback escorted by black people (even the Dutch admit it is somewhat racist) as his helpers. I'm pretty sure I remember learning once that America kind of adopted the idea of Santa Claus from the Dutch Saint Nicolas celebration.
- Hong Kong: Same as America surprisingly. In fact, the Hong Kong girl on my trip said Christmas is a huge deal there and that they have lots of decorations and celebrations. I'm assuming this stems from when Hong Kong was a British territory
- England: Exact same as the United States
- Japan: I don't know because the old Japanese couple barely speaks English

Other: 
- Most of the countries above said they don't really do Halloween.
- The english girls said department stores start putting up Christmas decorations in late August
- The Brits typically begin decorating their houses for X-Mas the first Sunday in December