Christmas traditions

I read some articles the other day on the website share-christmas.com and it talks about different Christmas traditions in every country.
I thought you might be interested because it's interested to know how other people celebrate Christmas.

Basically what it talks about is that the Dutch children believe in Sinerklaas who lives in Spain. The evening before Christmas the children put hay and sugar into their shoes, for Sinterklaas' horse.
It also says that in Hungary Santa Clause is called Mikulas. Christmas dinner is a special Hungarian holiday meal which usually consists of fish, lentils and poppy seed strudel.
In Thailand, people don't believe in Jesus but they like decorating Christmas trees and putting up other decorations.

In my opinion it's very interesting to know about other traditions because they are sometimes very different from ours.

Christmas shoppers out in force for national holiday

I've just read an article in today's online edition of "austriantimes.at" and it talks about the busiest shopping day of the year.
I thought you might be interested because you may also go shopping on the 8 December.

Basically what it says is that lots of shoppers poured into Austrian shopping centres and that stores in the textile and toy had done especially good business. It is also said that this is the only holiday in the year on which all stores are allowed to open for business.
Also the catholic churches were open and the leaders invited people to visit them to get closer to the real meaning of Advent.

"Billa" and the chain "Möbel Ludwig" Closed its branches on the 8 December.

What surprised me most was the fact that lots of people go shopping on a holiday.

In my opinion, there shouldn't be any shopping centres and stores open on the 8 December.



Original text:
http://austriantimes.at/news/Business/2009-12-09/18698/Christmas_shoppers_out_in_force_for_national_holiday