Home » Christmas » Christmas in Belarus Christmas in Belarus   Though Belarus has suffered the ravages of the Nazi occupation and hundreds of thousands of its population have perished in more than 200 concentration camps, it has been able to make good its losses. Even in the face of massive destruction that it has had to encounter whatever little it has been able to retain doesn’t fail to enthrall a visitor. The Nazis have gone and so have the Russians with Belarus being declared an independent country in 1991.So, if you are looking forward to a quite yet warm holiday during the cool wintry months, spend your Christmas in Belarus. Christmas has become quite an elaborate affair in Belarus. As an East European country most of its descendants have hailed from the Eastern Slavic and Baltic regions. Christmas in Belarus is strictly a traditional white Christmas as it is celebrated around the middle of winter. Most of the Christian rituals in Belarus have pagan roots and thus a pre-Christian celebration of the New Year known as the Kaliady was more popular where indigenous folks dressed up as animals and other beasts and carried the sun and a goat’s head on a stick. These folk rituals were incorporated by the Orthodox and Catholic churches and in recent times, Kaliady is celebrated between two dates, Catholic Christmas on December 25 and the Orthodox Christmas on January 5. Though a lot of controversy stems from the meaning of spruce- eternal life returning and though the etymological meaning of the word kaliady has no connection with Christmas (as it refers to the wheel and Latin "Calendae", which is the name for the first day of each month), the festivities reflect traditional Christian rituals like decoration of the Christmas tree, singing carols and performing folk theatre plays. The traditional Christmas salutation is "Vyaselykh Kalyad" and the ritual food cooked for three ritual dinners, "posnaia viachera"( fasting dinner, devoid of meat or fat ) "toustaia"( fat or meat dinner) "miasnaia" on New Year Eve and the last one - "halodnaia" ( hungry) or "vadzianaia" ( watery) at the end of Kaliady. For more details on Christmas in Belarus log on to 123Christians.