Christmas in Armenia

Christmas day is said for the day of celebrating Christ’s birthday.
It is on Dec 25th in most of Christian countries, except using the Julian calendar. Armenia is one of those.
They celebrate their Christmas day on around Jan 6th or 7th.

I was in Armenia just during their Christmas holiday season without this information (I’ve never heard about Armenia before I went to Central Asian countries…) last year 2011.
I couldn’t have Christmas celebration in Iran.

Soon after turning to 2011, I cross the border between those two countries.
When I arrived at the immigration office of Armenian border, a young woman wearing amazingly shorten skirt welcomed me to her country.
She also wore Santa Claus hat.

I asked her why she wears ‘too Santa’ hat even after Dec 25th.
She looked shocked and almost yelled me ‘This is a Christmas season now!’.
I still couldn’t get the reason of her wearing Santa hat,
then arrived at Yerevan –the capital city of Armenia.

There was huge Christmas tree in front of the station. I thought Armenian people are too lazy to put it back to a storehouse.




‘ What a country… It never happens in Japan. We decorate our city with New Year’s ornaments on the morning of Dec 26th.’


Next day, I took a stroll. City hall, central post office, national museum(it was closed at that time) and so on… huge Christmas trees and Santa Clauses were everywhere!







?????


This question was solved when I got to Georgia, the next country of Armenia.
I was going to meet a man who is doing some research about central Asian countries there and he explained me about the Julian calendar.


Armenia is the oldest country that set the Christianity for their national religion on 301 BC. However the history of this country contains full of tragedy and much of those have not been reported in Japan.

Among backpackers, Armenia is famous for plenty of beautiful ladies, great wines and amazing scenery of Mt, Ararat.
If you miss the chance to have happy Christmas day in your place, you have a spare one in Armenia on January!

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