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Home to many Christmas traditions such as Christmas trees, craft fairs and fruitcake, Germany keeps the celebrations mostly secular.

In general, interviewees described a culture where family is nuclear, small, and the forms and commitments of family life are fluid.

The organ remains overwhelmingly the musical instrument of choice, and the singing of traditional hymns is a most important form of worship.

Thoroughness and attention to proper detail are said to be important German traits when it comes to any kind of work, and the liturgy is celebrated in the same way.

Church and state are connected in interesting ways, but one could never conclude from that that religiosity and religious language pervade political life.

Indian churches tend to reflect one of three eras — a Portuguese baroque Jesuit style, a whitewashed French Gothic style from 19th- and 20th-century missionaries, or painted concrete contemporary styles in the postcolonial era.

There are now more Melkite Catholics living outside the Middle East than inside. For social, cultural and canonical reasons, these Catholics face particular challenges.

Greek Melkite Catholics worship according to a Greek form of the Byzantine rite, weaving music, movement, iconography and prayer.

Fasting and abstinence play important seasonal roles in the life of the Melkite Church, in the “Great Fast,” or Lent, before Easter; and in three other fasts — before Christmas; the first two weeks of August; and at the Fast of the Apostles.

Islam opposes the representation of the divine in religious art, so a good deal of the visual culture in Jordan is represented through architecture and design, rather than images. Christian Jordanians, however, do display religious images in public, and are not prevented from doing so. Many women do so discreetly by wearing a gold or silver cross, but other kinds of religious images are commonly for sale in shops that sell to both Christians and Muslims. In general, Jordanian norms emphasize modesty, not flashiness or bright colors (though there are brightly lit exceptions on the skyline of