Not every country celebrates Christmas, and even those that do don't always agree on the date. Some, like Holland, have it on December 5, St Nicholas Day, and many Orthodox Christians celebrate Epiphany on January 6th.

New Year varies too. In some Orthodox countries, it's January 14, Chinese Lunar New Year moves according to the lunar cycle, anywhere between late January and mid-February, and while most Western countries usually ring in the new year on January 1st, at midnight, Israel's New Year is in September.

One thing is common, though. People, the world over, enjoy these occasions and love to gather with friends and family. Food, fun and games, fireworks, gifts, more food - that's the common theme.

So let's have a look at how our world's neighbours are planning to celebrate:

Australia

Date: December 25th

Christmas greeting: Merry Christmas

Foods: varies from tradition hot dinner (lunch) of turkey, ham and Christmas pudding to seafood platters and barbecues.

Drink: wine, beer, sparkling wine

Customs: Some attend church, including midnight mass on Dec 24th. Picnics and family gatherings are popular in the hot weather.

Bahamas

Date: December 25

Christmas greeting: Merry Christmas

Foods: Lobster salad or smoked salmon, ham, turkey with stuffing and baked fish. Desserts usually guava duff (steamed pudding), German chocolate cake, mince pies, Italian panettone; Christmas pudding, black cake. Boxing Day it is traditional to have boil fish or stew fish with johnny cake and grits.

Drinks: ginger beer, sorrel, mauby, sweet potato fly.

Customs: Junkanoo parades - costumes, dancing and music.

Colombia

Date: December 25, beginning on December 7, Dia de las Velitas, or Day of the Candles.

Christmas greeting: Feliz Navidad y Próspero Año Nuevo

Foods: Bueuelos (like a doughnut), manjar blanco (blancmange), hojuelas (fried crisps) and sweet bread filled with fruits like raisins and raspberries.

Drinks: rum and Aguardiente, an anise drink

Customs: Houses and streets are decorated with candles and paper lanterns. Misa de Gallo (Rooster's Mass) is on Christmas Eve at midnight, then people open presents and parties are held until sunrise on Christmas Day.

Finland

Date: December 25

Christmas greeting: Hyvää Joulua

Foods: Christmas ham, roast suckling pig, turkey, boiled codfish, pickled herring and vegetables, prune jam pastries, plum or mixed fruit soup, rice porridge with cinnamon, sugar and cold milk.

Drinks: hot cider, glogg (mulled wine)

Customs: Candles are lit on the Christmas tree, which is traditionally decorated using apples and other fruits, candies, paper flags, cotton and tinsel. Christmas dinner or joulup�yt�, which is usually served between 5pm and 7pm on Christmas Eve, or traditionally with the appearance of the first star in the sky.

France:

Date: December 25

Christmas greeting: Joyeux Noel

Foods: Foie gras, oysters, escargots and smoked salmon, Buche de Noel (chocolate log cake). Turkey (with chestnuts) is the traditional dish of New Year�s Eve.

Drinks: Champagne, wine.

Customs: Children put their shoes by the fireplace so Pére Noél (Father Christmas or Santa Claus) can give them gifts. Many families attend midnight mass. Some people put additional santons (little saints) in their nativity scenes, which are bought at special Christmas fairs.

Germany

Date: December 25

Christmas greeting: Froehliche Weihnachten

Foods: plenty of meat dishes, goose with dumplings and sauerkraut, chocolate pudding with gooseberries.

Drinks: gluhwein (warm spiced red wine)

Customs: The main celebration is Christmas Eve when families attend evening church then open presents with a late evening meal at home.

Greece

Christmas: December 25, Epiphany Jan 6th.

Christmas greeting: Kala Christouyenna!

Foods: Roast turkey and potatoes, dolmades, pastichio (similar to lasagne), baklava, honey-dipped biscuits, almond biscuits, custard pastry slice (galaktompoureko).

Drinks: ouzo or brandy (metaxa)

Customs: Dawn mass, there are presents from St Vasilios on December 31; for New Year (January 1st) a cake with a coin inside, vasilopita, is served at midnight of New Year's Day in hour of St Basil's Day (January 1st).

Holland:

Date: December 5th, the eve of St Nicholas Day,

Christmas greeting: Zalig Kerstfeast

Foods: chocolates in the shape of your first initial, peperknoten (spiced ginger biscuits) honey biscuits shaped like St Nicholas, marzipan balls, olliebollen (apple doughnuts), kerststol (fruited Christmas loaf).

Drinks: advocaat (a brandy eggnog)

Customs: Children leave clogs or shoes out to be filled with presents.

India

Date: December 25

Christmas greeting: Naya Saal Mubarak Ho (Urdu)

Foods: breakfast: appam (pancakes) with curry, lunch: meat and fish, pork vindaloo, rice pudding (payasam). East Indians in Mumbai (Bombay) make many sweets including borose sponge cake, coconut cake, gram dhal sweet, vanilla cream, coconut cream.

Drinks: whisky, beer and arrack (fermented palm sap)

Customs: Exchange of sweets rather than presents.

Italy:

Date: December 25

Christmas greeting: Buone Feste Natalizie

Foods: varies throughout the regions.

Liguria - pan dolce, panettone, torrone (nougat) and panforte, Molise - baccala griddlecakes, pollo alléoratinese ( fried chicken), caucione, a liqueur-flavoured chickpea flour cake, confetti (sugared almonds);

Tuscany - cantucci, hard biscuits to dip in sweet wine;

Naples - struffoli, tiny balls of deep-fried dough;

Emilia-Romagna - zampone di Modena, stuffed pig trotters with lentils and vegetables;

Venice - sautéed eels;

Umbria -panforte di Siena (a rich flat nut cake); throughout much of Italy - lentils to ensure prosperity in the year ahead, panettone, a fruited egg-rich bread.

Drinks: sparkling prosecco.

Customs: a seven course fish meal on Christmas Eve is traditional before the family attends Midnight Mass.

Lebanon

Date: December 25

Christmas greeting: Milad Majid

Foods: An elaborate feast that includes stuffed chicken, tabbouleh, hummus and kibbeh, and buche de Noel.

Drinks: Wine.

Customs: Church bells at midnight. Two weeks beforehand, families sow wheat, lentil, chickpea seeds and beans in cotton wool to celebrate the coming of the Lord. By Christmas, these seeds will have become shoots, which are placed under the Christmas tree and around the nativity scene.

Nigeria

Date: December 25

Christmas greeting: Merry Christmas

Foods: on Christmas Eve, Iyan, (pounded yam), eba or amala, served with peppery stewed vegetables, rice served with chicken stew, moin-moin, steamed leaf-wrapped beans and meat.

Drinks: Zobo, made from dried hibiscus flowers.

Customs: Houses are decorated with palm fronds.

Peru

Date: December 25

Christmas greeting: Feliz Navidad y Próspero Año Nuevo

Foods: traditional stuffed turkey (and sometimes roast pork) as well as tamales, salads, applesauce, and a sweet bread called panettone (paneton)

Drinks: hot chocolate, champagne.

Customs: Noche Buena (Good Night). Some choose to attend the "misa del gallo" (rooster mass) at 10 pm, then a feast after midnight.

Philippines

Date: December 25

Christmas greeting: Maligayan Pasko!

Foods: queso de bola (edam cheese), and jamon (ham), sweet rice cake.

Drinks: tsokolate (hot chocolate)

Customs: Noche Buena - a traditional Christmas Eve feast. Christmas officially ends on the Feast of the Three Kings also known as the Feast of the Epiphany.

Russia

Date: January 7

Christmas greeting: Pozdrevlyayu s prazdnikom Rozhdestva is Novim Godom

Foods: Thus fish, mushrooms and various types of grain, herring, carp or pike are eaten, sauerkraut with wild mushrooms or peas, red borscht, Boiled or deep fried dumplings or jam doughnuts.

Drinks: Vodka

Customs: On Christmas Eve, there are several long services. The family will then return home for the traditional Christmas Eve "Holy Supper", which consists of 12 dishes, one to honour each of the Twelve Apostles.

Singapore

Christmas: December 25

Foods: One hotel makes a kueh lapis Christmas log cake meticulously baked layer by layer. Many hotels serve traditional western Christmas menus.

Spain:

Date: December 25, main celebration Christmas Eve.

Christmas greeting: Feliz Navidad

Foods: fresh seafood, lamb or pork, turrons (nougat-wrapped almonds), Drinks: brandy, cava (sparkling wine).

Customs: late night meal, Noche Buena ('the good night'); Christmas lights and Christmas carols (villancicos); presents are not given until January 6th (Feast of the Three Kings).

United Kingdom:

Date: December 25th

Christmas greeting: Merry Christmas

Foods: roast turkey and stuffing, ham, Christmas pudding with brandy sauce, Christmas cake, nuts

Drinks: eggnog, wine and spirits.

Customs: Some attend church, including midnight mass on Dec 24th. Family gatherings for lunch.

USA:

Date: December 25

Christmas greeting: Merry Christmas

Foods: baked goose, turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, vegetables, squash, and pumpkin pie or plum pudding.

Drinks: beer, wine, spirits.

AND JUST FOR FUN

Will And Guy's Interesting Trivia and Facts at Christmastide

• If you received all of the gifts in the song 'The Twelve Days of Christmas', you would receive 364 presents.

• Robins on cards were a joke 150 years ago when British postmen wore red tunics and were named after this lovely bird.
• December heralds the busiest time of the year for the Post Office, as Christmas cards swell the amount of mail in the UK to twice the usual amount.

• It is also the peak time for the National Return Letter Service, which handles 50 million wrongly addressed items of mail every year.

• The first Christmas stamp was released in Canada in 1898 and not Austria in 1937 as some claim.
• The approximate amount generated by photographs with Santa in shopping malls in the USA in dollars:$2,255,750,000.
• Christmas trees are grown in every American state.
• The world's tallest Christmas tree was 221 feet high and appeared in a Washington, USA shopping mall in 1950.
• Electric lights for on Christmas trees were first used in 1895.
• Alabama was the first state in the USA to declare Christmas a legal holiday in 1836.
• In 1999, residents of the state of Maine in America built the world's biggest ever snowman. He stood at 113ft tall.
• The Queen Elizabeth II's speech was first televised in 1957.
• There were only seven 'white Christmases' in Britain during the twentieth century.
• There are 13 Santa's in Iceland, each leaving a gift for children. They come down from the mountain one by one, starting on December 12 and have names like Spoon Licker, Door Sniffer and Meat Hook. 'Lovely names', say Will and Guy.
• Until AD 440, Christmas day was not celebrated on 25th December.
• There is no reference to angels singing anywhere in the Holy Bible.
• More diamonds are bought around Christmas than any other time of the year.
• Apparently Christmas trees remove dust and pollen from the air.
• The Russian Santa Claus carries a pink piglet under his arm.
• Christmas pudding should be stirred from east to west. Will's Mum always did this.

(reprinted from.......)

AND to wish each other Merry Christmas and Happy New Year worldwide read on.....