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The custom of celebrating the saint's day instead of the birthday is
followed, so that birthdays pass unperceived while the day dedicated
in the calendar of the Catholic Church to the saint whose name a
person bears, is the day which he celebrates and on which he receives
the felicitations of his friends.
Christmas tide is not a time when presents are exchanged, and
Christmas trees are not found, save rarely and where the foreign
influence is strong. There is no lack of celebration, however. On
Christmas Eve the churches are crowded and there are banquets and
dances going on everywhere. In the cities the small boys amuse
themselves by setting off fireworks. During the Christmas week dances
are frequent, and in the country they continue sometimes for days to
the lugubrious accompaniment of accordions and large drums. December
the twenty-eighth, Holy Innocents' day, is All Fools' day, instead of
April the first, it being argued that just as the innocents of Herod's
day were made to suffer, so the innocents of this age should be
persecuted.


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