Christmas in April

Christmas in April

Christmas in April

A Christmas card, making its way from Spadina and Bloor to Queen's Quay, arrives April 10 - four months after it was sent. (Stan Behal, Sun)


Famous Recipes

A Christmas Contagion

A Christmas Contagion
With Santa Claus hats bejeweled with blinking lights and tinsel sparkling in shop windows, the commercial side of Western Christmas is finds its way to Cairo
By Nicolè A. Staab

http://www.egypttoday.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=7120

CHRISTMAS HIT CAIRO like an arctic blizzard last month: near-instantly, (not quite) unexpectedly and affecting everything in the area. It’s on the trees, around the windows, in the hotels and throughout the shops. Once-empty window frames were trimmed with glimmering garlands and lively lights, while neighborhood flower shops sprouted fields of red poinsettias and forests of live spruce trees — and even the odd cut Douglas Fir.




The Christmas contagion had arrived. It wasn’t a religious holiday for the 90 (or so) percent of the population that identifies itself as Muslim, but it was certainly a secular reason to hold a party or trim a tree. Once the province of foreign residents and the nation’s relative handful of Western Christians (the vast majority of Christians in Egypt follow the Orthodox tradition), Christmas today is more of a week-long event.



Not even the three-year-old declaration of Orthodox Christmas (January 7) as a national holiday has dampened enthusiasm for celebrating from December 25 through December 31, a period that has morphed into a week-long secular break.


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