Early in December, thousands of students, faculty, and visitors gather around the front campus fountain for an annual Christmas carol sing and lighting ceremony, culminating in the illumination of tens of thousands of Christmas lights.

On December 3, 2004, the ceremony broke the Guinness World Record for Christmas caroling with 7, 514 carolers.

The Christmas ceremony dates to a period prior to the American Revolutionary War, but lapsed before being revived by University President Nicholas Murray Butler in the early 20th century.

The declaration ceremony begins with the hymn Jumala ompi linnamme ( Martin Luther's Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott ) and continues with the Declaration of Christmas Peace read from a parchment roll in Finnish and Swedish.

As part of the tradition, the Lord Mayor of Westminster visits Oslo in the late autumn to take part in the felling of the tree, and the Mayor of Oslo then goes to London to light the tree at the Christmas ceremony.

The Savanna Chamber of Commerce and other community groups sponsor several activities throughout the year that include ; the annual Ladies Day Out Luncheon, a Memorial Day parade and ceremony, the yearly Riverfront Festival, 4 July Fireworks, the Halloween Haunted Forest, and a downtown Christmas Walk.

There is also a Christmas tree lighting ceremony, arrival of Santa, and carriage rides throughout the historic streets shortly after Thanksgiving.

A Christmas parade is held each year with a tree-lighting ceremony, as well the annual community fish fry hosted by the Local Chapter of the Ruritan.

The Vatican has displayed a scene in St. Peter's Square near its Christmas tree since 1982 and the Pope has for many years blessed the mangers of children assembled in St. Peter's Square for a special ceremony.

It was also worn when a pope gave his traditional Christmas and Easter Urbi et Orbi blessing from the balcony of St Peter's, the only religious ceremony when the tiara was worn.

He became a Christian in a ceremony at Reims at Christmas 496 ; the traditional date of the battle of Tolbiac has been established to accord with this firmly attested baptismal date, by accepting as literal truth Gregory's account which has a clear parallel with the conversion of Constantine I, connected by Lactantius with the equally conclusive Battle of the Milvian Bridge.

A ceremony takes place each Advent to light up the town's Christmas tree.

Gounod's Marche Pontificale was first performed in this new role during a ceremony on Christmas Eve of 1949, one day before the opening of the Holy Year 1950.

At Lindenhurst Senior High School ( 1967 – 71 ), Benatar participated in musical theater, playing Queen Guinevere in the school production of Camelot, marching in the homecoming parade, singing at the annual Christmas Tree Lighting ceremony, and performing a solo of " The Christmas Song " on a holiday recording of the Lindenhurst High School Choir her senior year.

On Christmas Day, 800, Pope Leo III crowned Charles as " Emperor of the Romans " in Rome in a ceremony presented as a surprise ( Charlemagne did not wish to be indebted to the bishop of Rome ), a further papal move in the series of symbolic gestures that had been defining the mutual roles of papal auctoritas and imperial potestas.

The BSO is commonly seen during the December holidays covering Christmas songs and often play the Rockefeller Center tree lighting ceremony.

Vivekananda performed the fire ceremony Christmas Eve December 25th, 1886 ; " after " Sri Ramakrishna's mahasamadhi ( death ) in August 16th, 1886.

The ceremony, in those days, was based on the reading of the traditional birth of Christ, i. e. the " Christmas Story ", unlike today's more generic " holiday " themes and music.

Camber is installed as Archbishop of Valoret on Christmas 917, but the ceremony is interrupted by Alroy and his Regents, who refuse to acknowledge his election.

Christmas ceremony in Karachi, Pakistan

After successfully transferring the remains Shoghi Effendi reburied the two next to each other in a ceremony on Christmas Day of 1939.

In 1954, the ceremony returned to the Ellipse and with an expanded focus: the " Christmas Pageant of Peace ".

The fund's statewide quota this year is $8,250 to provide Christmas gifts for needy youngsters.

The territory is administered from Canberra by the Department of Regional Australia, Local Government, Arts and Sport, which is also responsible for the administration of the territories of Christmas Island, Cocos ( Keeling ) Islands, the Coral Sea Islands, Jervis Bay and Norfolk Island.

* Santa Claus also known as Saint Nicholas, Father Christmas and simply " Santa ", is a figure with legendary, mythical, historical and folkloric origins who, in many western cultures, is said to bring gifts to the homes of the good children during the late evening and overnight hours of Christmas Eve, December 24.

Cider is the most popular beverage of the middle and lower economic classes at Christmas and New Year ( the upper classes proverbially preferring to celebrate with locally produced champagne, although real old-line " creole " aristocrats will still drink cider, which is much more traditional ).

From then on retail trade is only restricted on public holidays ( New Years Day, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Sunday, Easter Monday, Day of Prayer, Ascension Day, Whit Sunday, Whit Monday, Christmas Day and Boxing Day ) and on Constitution Day, Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve ( on New Year's Eve from 3 pm only ).

Bock is historically associated with special occasions, often religious festivals such as Christmas, Easter or Lent.

In Austria, bockbier is traditionally brewed only around Christmas and Easter, when nearly every brewery brews its own bock.

Bock beer is produced in Mexico around Christmas season, under the Noche Buena label with 5. 9 % abv

Bethlehem's chief economic sector is tourism which peaks during the Christmas season when Christian pilgrims throng to the Church of the Nativity.

In a twist on Charles Dickens ' A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Blackadder is the " kindest and loveliest " man in England.

Boxing Day is traditionally the day following Christmas Day, when servants and tradespeople would receive gifts from their superiors or employers.

Today, Boxing Day is better known as a bank or public holiday that occurs on 26 December, or the first or second weekday after Christmas Day, depending on national or regional laws.

In the Netherlands, Latvia, Lithuania, Austria, Germany, Scandinavia, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland and Catalonia, 26 December is celebrated as the Second Christmas Day.

This custom is linked to an older English tradition: Since they would have to wait on their masters on Christmas Day, the servants of the wealthy were allowed the next day to visit their families.

Boxing Day is a secular holiday that is traditionally celebrated on 26 December, the day after Christmas Day, which is also St. Stephen's Day, a religious holiday.

In the UK, where Boxing Day is a bank holiday, if Boxing Day falls on a Saturday, a substitute bank holiday is given on the following Monday, but if 26 December falls on a Sunday – which means that Christmas Day, another holiday, fell on a Saturday – then the Statutory Holiday for Christmas is moved to Monday 27 December and the Statutory Holiday for Boxing Day is moved to Tuesday 28 December.

Other chart hits during this period included Parton's chart-topping cover of the 1969 First Edition hit " But You Know I Love You " and " The House of the Rising Sun " ( both 1981 ), " Single Women ", " Heartbreak Express " and " Hard Candy Christmas " ( 1982 ) and 1983's " Potential New Boyfriend ", which was accompanied by one of Parton's first music videos, and which also reached the U. S. dance charts.

John Brand's Popular Antiquities ( 1859 ) describes a custom in Kent of ' going a hodening ' at Christmas, going round the houses in procession and singing carols, accompanied by a sort of hobby-horse.

A media blitz accompanied the single capped off by the VH-1 special called A Kid Rock Christmas, which aired on December 14, 2003.

They were historically an important part of the Christmas celebrations in Nevis, performed on Christmas Eve by small troupes consisting of five or six men accompanied by string bands from different parts of the island.

In the Christmas special " Endgame " during Margaret's alleged death scene, a compilation of clips from past episodes are accompanied by the song " River Runs Deep " performed by J. J. Cale.

The peak of its season is the Lincoln Christmas Market, accompanied by a massive annual production of Handel's Messiah.

The Holt Christmas lights have been running for a number of years and are accompanied by a number of other attractions in the town centre, mainly sponsored by local people and businesses.

Christian songs, such as the Auroras, are traditionally sung a cappella, sometimes accompanied by the sound of church bells, and cuadrillas are festive songs primarily played during holidays, like Christmas.

For the Christmas season in 2005, an ad campaign was launched involving a hippopotamus named Hazina from the Greater Vancouver Zoo, accompanied by the song " I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas ".

Two of his hits were " The Song of the Sewer ", sung in character as Norton, and "' Twas the Night Before Christmas ", a spoken-word record in which Carney, accompanied only by a jazz drummer, recited the famous Yuletide poem in syncopation.

Before Christmas 1999, GTR released Christmas All Over The World, his first seasonal album, with half being Christmas standards such as " Jingle Bells ", " White Christmas ", " Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer ", " What Are You Doing New Year's Eve ", " The Christmas Song ( Chestnuts Roasting )", and " Joy to the World ", on which his daughter Elizabeth accompanied him.

Dagobert spent Christmas of 1094 with Pope Urban, and then accompanied him on his pastoral tour of Italy and France, including the Council of Piacenza, held to reassert the pope's authority after the Investiture Controversy, and the Council of Clermont, at which the pope launched the First Crusade.

These boxes are then distributed as Christmas gifts, accompanied by Christian literature.

At Christmas the town presents festive lighting throughout its main and subsidiary streets, accompanied by competing shop displays.

Several fireworks then explode, accompanied by a burning Christmas tree and the final shot shows the young man lying in bed next to another topless man.

Fields, accompanied by an Royal Air Force | RAF orchestra, entertains airmen at their 1939 Christmas party.

* Thunderbirds: while this mid-sixties series was originally not tied into a single range of toys, like other Gerry Anderson series it heavily featured vehicles that were strongly toyetic, and from its original run onwards through subsequent re-runs in many decades that followed it was accompanied by extensive merchandise in both Europe and Japan, most notably in the UK during the run-up to Christmas 1993, when demand for The Tracy Island toy set so massively outstripped supply that it became headline news and the example cited every Christmas since as the archetypal mistake the whole toy industry must avoid.