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Did you know that here in Norway we culturally celebrate Christmas today, on Christmas eve?
While the church, at least in principle, maintain Christmas day as the day of celebration, of course, I don't think many people know this. They always have mass on both days, and most people who attend does it on Christmas eve.
I wonder how this happened, and how many other countries does this. #christmas #ChristmasTraditions #Norway
@forteller Sweden does, as does Germany as well as France as far as I know. I thought most of Europe celebrates on the 24'th.
@forteller Here in Poland it's similar - the main part of celebration - festive dinner with family - takes place on Christmas Eve. Mass in churches happen on following days 
@forteller I have similar experience in Poland. Here the unique celebration is on 24th, while 25th is like a generic holiday (with 26th available for traveling back home).
@forteller
In the middle ages they used to count sundown instead of midnight as the start of the new day, so in Norway we'd start the new day (the 25th) at around 4-5 pm on what we now call the 24th. So according to the old traditions they celebrated the 25th, but after the introduction of the clock (and date shift at midnight), they kept the celebrations on what became the eve of the 24th instead of moving it to the 25th.
@cmyrland @forteller It's actually much older than the middle ages and stems back to when the Jewish day starts: it starts at sundown. You see the same pattern for Easter where Easter eve is before Easter day.
(See also Genesis 1:5: "[..] And the evening and the morning were the first day.".)
@lk @forteller Unsure, but that site tends to visualize data deficiency quite well