On December 25, Christmas will be celebrated around the world. Although nominally a Christian holiday, Christmas is also widely celebrated by many non-Christians. Christmas, also referred to as Christmas Day or Christmastide, is an annual holiday that marks and honors the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, the central figure of Christianity, which is the basis for the anno Domini system of dating, thought to have occurred between 7 and 2 BC (before Christ). Eastern Orthodox national churches, including those of Russia, Georgia, Egypt, Ukraine, the Macedonia, Serbia and the Greek Patriarchate of Jerusalem mark feasts using the older Julian Calendar, and December 25 on that calendar currently corresponds to January 7 on the more widely used Gregorian calendar.
Christians believe that on Christmas God did sent his son into the world who took all the sins of mankind on his shoulders. 
In the early years of Christianity, Easter was the main holiday; the birth of Jesus was not celebrated. In the fourth century, church officials decided to institute the birth of Jesus as a holiday. First called the Feast of the Nativity, the custom spread to Egypt by 432 and to England by the end of the sixth century. By the end of the eighth century, the celebration of Christmas had spread all the way to Scandinavia. Continue reading →
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