Page:Every Woman's Encyclopedia Volume 1.djvu/583

 559 This section comprises articles showing how women may help in all branches of religious work. All the principal charities will be described, as well as home and foreign missions. The chief headings are : Bazaars How to Manage a Church Bazaar What to Make for Bazaars Garden Bazaars, etc. How to Manage a Sunday School Woman's Work in Religion Missionaries Zenana Missions Home Missions, etc. Great Leaders of Religious Thought Charities to Work for Great Hoiv Charities Great Charity Organisations Local Charities, etc. The Women of the Bible CHRISTMAS IN MANY LANDS By LOUISE LEDERER J. our quest in many I I I after Christmas observances lands we naturally direct our attention first to the Holy Land. How Christmas is celebrated there we gather from the writings of missionaries, one of whom has spent over twenty-three years in Jerusalem, which is only six miles from Bethlehem. " The churches in Jeru- salem," he says, " are decorated with feathery sprays of the pepper- tree, which has bright red berries, and with branches of fir, also with palm branches." Another pastor describes the ceremony of the Christmas festival at Bethlehem. " The interior of the church on Christmas Day was most picturesque. There were only a few chairs provided for the foreign visitors, while the bulk of the congregation were Bethlehemite women in their blue dresses with red frontlets, wearing peaked caps when married and flat caps when single, covered by white veils. As they first entered the church they knelt down, and then squatted on the ground in true Oriental fashion. "At twelve precisely, Pontifical High Mass is celebrated with all the pomp and cere- monial of the Church. Then the bambino — a doll representing the Christ — is brought in a basket and deposited upon the high altar. Then the procession forms to accompany it to the crypt. As the long, chanting procession winds through the dimly lighted church, there is something weirdly solemn about the ceremony, and as the bambino passes various acts of worship are performed by the devout attendants. On the procession moves, through rough-hewn, age-worn passages, from the Latin church to the Grotto of Nativity. When the long train of richly robed ecclesiastics reaches the silver star set in the pavement, they pause and stand in a group about the bambino in the basket, which is deposited upon the star. This is the spot on which tradition places the actual birth of Jesus. There the recital of the accounts of the birth of Jesus, as found in the Gospels, is slowly intoned, and when the passage (Luke ii. 7), ' And she brought forth her first-born Son, and wrapped Him in swaddling clothes and laid him on the manger, because there was no room for them in the inn,' is read the bambino is reverently picked up from the star and carried over to the oppo- site side of the grotto, where it is put in a rock-cut manger, and then covered with a wire screen. Here the bambino is left all night and all the next day." Christmas in Rome will always attrac;t the multitude. There is so much to be seen and to be done in Rome between Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Vespers on Christmas Eve and lovely singing in the church, midnight Mass at St. Peter's, the Shepherd's Hymn at two in the morning, and then again morning Mass at St. Peter's, when the Christmas Day Mass is celebrated. At the Sistine Chapel the Christmas Eve service is generally conducted by the Pope. A rigid rule prevails that women of all nations and all ages who appear in the presence of the Pope must be attired in black and wear black veils draped over their hair and no hats. The Sistine Chapel, famous for its frescoes by Michael Angelo, is always one of the sights of Rome, but on Christmas Eve,