In our quest after Christmas observances in many lands we naturally direct our attention first to the Holy Land. How Christmas is celebrated there we gather from the writings of missionaries, one of whom has spent over twenty-three years in Jerusalem, which is only six miles from Bethlehem. "The churches in Jerusalem," he says, "are decorated with feathery sprays of the pepper-tree, which has bright red berries, and with branches of fir, also with palm branches."

Another pastor describes the ceremony of the Christmas festival at Bethlehem. "The interior of the church on Christmas Day was most picturesque. There were only a few chairs provided for the foreign visitors, while the bulk of the congregation were Bethlehemite women in their blue dresses with red frontlets, wearing peaked caps when married and flat caps when single, covered by white veils. As they first entered the church they knelt down, and then squatted on the ground in true Oriental fashion.

"At twelve precisely, Pontifical High Mass is celebrated with all the pomp and ceremonial of the Church. Then the bambino - a doll representing the Christ - is brought in a basket and deposited upon the high altar. Then the procession forms to accompany it to the crypt. As the long, chanting procession winds through the dimly lighted church, there is something weirdly solemn about the ceremony, and as the bambino passes various acts of worship are performed by the devout attendants. On the procession moves, through rough-hewn, age-worn passages, from the Latin church to the Grotto of Nativity. When the long train of richly robed ecclesiastics reaches the silver star set in the pavement, they pause and stand in a group about the bambino in the basket, which is deposited upon the star. This is the spot on which tradition places the actual birth of Jesus. There the recital of the accounts of the birth of Jesus, as found in the Gospels, is slowly intoned, and when the passage (Luke ii. 7), 'and she brought forth her first-born Son, and wrapped Him in swaddling clothes and laid him on the manger, because there was no room for them in the inn,' is read the bambino is reverently picked up from the star and carried over to the opposite side of the grotto, where it is put in a rock-cut manger, and then covered with a wire screen. Here the bambino is left all night and all the next day."

Christmas in Rome will always attract the multitude. There is so much to be seen and to be done in Rome between Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Vespers on Christmas Eve and lovely singing in the church, midnight Mass at St. Peter's, the Shepherd's Hymn at two in the morning, and then again morning Mass at St. Peter's, when the Christmas Day Mass is celebrated.

At the Sistine Chapel the Christmas Eve service is generally conducted by the Pope. A rigid rule prevails that women of all nations and all ages who appear in the presence of the Pope must be attired in black and wear black veils draped over their hair and no hats. The Sistine Chapel, famous for its frescoes by Michael Angelo, is always one of the sights of Rome, but on Christmas Eve, alight with innumerable candles and filled with the gorgeously robed clergy, and at their head the Pope, a service in the chapel, with the wondrous notes of the organ and the lovely singing of the choir, cannot fail to impress the stranger very forcibly.

St. Peter's is claimed by the Italians as the finest cathedral of the world. At ten o'clock precisely on Christmas Day, the massive centre door being thrown open, music begins, and the grand procession of the day approaches. The great church is full of light, partly shed by the hundreds of ever-burning lamps round St. Peter's shrine and partly by the light streaming through the great coloured windows. On comes the procession, bishops in purple and rich lace, canons in white, minor canons in grey fur capes, priests and deacons, and one hundred acolytes wearing silver buckled shoes and surplices. Red-robed cardinals in vestments of cloth of gold, adorned with precious stones, precede the Pope's chair, borne high on the shoulders of his bearers. With thumb and two extended fingers, to symbolise the Trinity, the Pope blesses the congregation.

At the high altar, a little in front of the attendant clergy, the Pope celebrates High Mass. When the Host is elevated, the crowds sink on their knees in silent worship. When High Mass is ended, the Pope, on his chair, is borne out of the cathedral on the opposite side of the nave, and again with extended hand blesses the crowd of worshippers.

In Naples the Festa Natalizie, as Christmas is called, is celebrated with much rejoicing.

The well into which legend says the star fell after the Nativity Mirth and laughter prevail; but at midnight, when the toll of the church bell announces the hour of Mass, all fun and frolic ceases, the streets are deserted, and every church is filled with devout worshippers, who on their knees celebrate the birth of the Saviour.

In Spain, Christmas is a two-days holiday. Nocha-buena, as Christmas Eve is called, is celebrated by the civil and military authorities by visiting all prisoners, in company with their advocates, and there and then liberate all those who have been imprisoned for light offences.

Everyone is in the street on Nocha-buena, and at midnight the gaily lit churches are crowded with worshippers for Mass. This service is universal in Spain, and is called the Misa del Galloy or Cock-crow Mass. There are three Masses on Christmas Day, and the Church rule, strictly observed, is, that if a man fails to attend the Misa del Gallo he must, to save his religious character, attend all three on Christmas Day.

The Russian Church is solemn in its celebration of Christmas. It sternly sets its face against "fiendish songs" and "devilish games." But the worshippers, after taking part devoutly in church services, tenacious of old customs, return to their revelries amid the protestation of their priests.

In Germany and Austria Christmas is eminently a festival of homely associations. At Christmas morning services families indifferent or long estranged meet in kindly feeling of goodwill.