ferrousland.com - daily news archives
Sunday, December 18, 2005
happy festy season - 04:33 PM
(filed under 'bahrain')
bahrain is a predominantly muslim country, so christmas is not officially celebrated. there are lots of expat parties going on & christmas functions run by & at the big hotel chains, but almost nowhere do you see the word 'christmas' mentioned, despite the abundance in some places of tinsel & the like hanging from every surface.
when we went out on the boat a few days ago, adam had a bag of tinsel with which to decorate the boat. they were new decorations with the tags/labels still on them. however, instead of being called christmas decorations, they were labelled as 'festive decorations'.
so it's not "merry christmas", it's "happy festive season". i assume it's so as not to offend the muslim population. for most people here, i'd bet it's not about the 'christ' in 'christmas' anyway, so i dare say it doesn't make much difference to them.
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