Nevertheless, despite the temperate weather, Christmas trees, mistletoe, holly, and European style gift giving accompany the festivities down under.

　　Zaire, Rumania, and Poland share a common Yuletide bond -- folk plays performed in villages around Christmas time. These performances all dramatize various aspects of the Christmas nativity story, complete with caricatures of Herod and his soldiers, the ever-popular tax collectors, the Wise Men, shepherds, sheep, camels, donkey, Mary, Joseph, and the infant Jesus.

　　Jamaica, as well as several other Caribbean islands and some African countries, favor such Christmas festivities as masquerade performances and parties. In Sierra Leone groups of school children march about town with their "devils" and stop at various points to present brief 12 to 15 minute performances, highlighted with devil dances. Less ominous than it appears, each group of boys and its respective Alikali Devil costume is sponsored and maintained throughout the year by local civic organizations.

　　In Venezuela, "devils" of a different kind fill the streets shortly after midnight on Christmas Eve. Hundreds of rollerskating teens fan out about their about towns for an hour or so, finally making their way to church and a special early morning Christmas mass. Skating home, they find bountiful Christmas breakfasts waiting for them, featuring hallacas-cornmeal pastries filled with spicy meat, wrapped in banana leaves and boiled.

　　Food and feasting seem to be universal qualities of Christmas celebrations. Where the indigenous population of a country has been influenced by the introduction of Europeans, the Christmas feast centers around a roast. Historically for Europeans settled by conquering Roman armies, the roast was a pig -- the traditional meal used to celebrate the Roman feast of Saturnalia. As many of these European countries began settling the Americas, turkeys were imported, raised, and substituted for pork.

Countries of the southern hemisphere feature fresh fruits and vegetables at their Christmas feasts which are often communal. For while the north marks the winter solstice, in the Zulu homelands, Zimbabwe, and Peru the Christmas celebration overlaps the festivities associated with the summer harvest and the pre-Christian