Christmas, originally celebrated as a holiday to commemorate the birth of Jesus Christ, has today gone on to became a day celebrated worldwide with much fervour. It has evolved into a day when friends and family gather to spend quality time with each other and also bring each other gifts. It is celebrated on 25th December, which is the middle of winter for most parts of the world and is that time of the year when it is dark and cold. So, to make this festival colourful, a lot of colours were made a part of it, some of the colours till date associated with Christmas are red, green, white and gold.
Red, undoubtedly the brightest of all colours, is an integral colour for Christmas festivities. The initial use of this colour was linked to the red apples on the paradise trees, which indicated the fall of Adam. There are also other meanings associated with the use of red, one of them being that it is representative of Jesus’s blood when he died on the cross. The association of red with Christmas went on to become so strong that it became the colour of the dress worn by Santa.
Green is essentially a colour that reminds people that winter will not last forever and spring is just around the corner. It is a message to people and brings hope for the brighter days to come. It is also known that Romans used to exchange evergreen branches during the month of January as a sign of good luck. In the Garden of Eden, the Paradise tree is always a lush green tree with red apples. Now, the most common form of Christmas decoration are green pine Christmas trees with colourful ornaments, streamers and lights.
The other two significant colours used during Christmas are gold and white. Gold is a colour used to symbolize two things; one is to symbolize the star that the three wise men followed to find baby Jesus, while the other reason for its use is that it was one of the presents offered to baby Jesus by one of the wise men.
In western culture, as well as many cultures across the world, white is associated with both peace and purity. Also, during Christmas, most of the western parts of the world are covered with snow which is also white. Thus, a white coloured cloth is used to cover the altar by most churches as the colour of Christmas. This year, go all out with these lovely colours to celebrate Christmas, fill yours and your loved one’s life with love on the day when love was born!
