Happy Ukrainian Christmas!

Christmas Eve and Koliada

Today is Christmas Eve by the old calendar, and is still celebrated by millions of people around the world, especially in Eastern Europe.

The 6th of January is also the date of the beginning of Koliada, an ancient Slavic winter festival that predates Christianity. The festival is now incorporated into Christmas festivities.

Koliada in the Mogilev region of Belarus at Christmastime in 1903.

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The festival in Lviv, Ukraine.

Christmas 1914

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25th December 1914: British and German officers pose for a photograph in No-Man’s Land during the famous unofficial Christmas truce in the first year of World War One.

For one day soldiers put down their weapons and celebrated the holiday with their enemies.

The British officers pictured here are from the  Northumberland Hussars, 7th Division, Bridoux-Rouge Banc Sector.

Christmas Day 120 Years Ago

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Bethlehem. 25th December 1898: A man and a woman recreate the approach of Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem. At the time the city was ruled by the Ottoman Empire.

Christmas Morning…

Christmas Morning (1885) by British painter Charles William Mansel Lewis

A Christmas Drink, 1916.

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Rollencourt Chateau, France: British press chauffeurs drinking to the King’s health at their Christmas dinner. 25th December 1916. First World War.

Wartime Christmas

English children evacuated during The Blitz eat their Christmas dinner in 1941 in a home for evacuees in Henley-on-Thames, a town along the River Thames in Oxfordshire.

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Christmas Stamp of the British Empire

Canadian Christmas stamp of 1898, less than three years before the end of Queen Victoria‘s long reign. At this point Canada was still part of the British Empire.

‘We hold a vaster Empire than has been’.

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1940 Christmas

This Christmas tree image was taken in Hungary in 1940. In November of the same year the country had joined the Axis Powers, and remained both staunchly pro-German and fascist throughout the Second World War.

175 Years of A Christmas Carol

Today is the 175th anniversary of the first publication of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. The book was written in only six weeks, and had sold out by Christmas Eve.