Hi, I plan to travel to East Africa over the Christmas, New year holidays. We are still settling on our itinerary and are trying to figure out where the best place would be to celebrate Christmas - i.e. where would we be most likely to experience a unique cultural Christmas experience?
Where would you suggest we go for Christmas?
Thanks!!
Christmas in Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania or Kenya
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Most hotels will try and put on a westernised Christmas day, so there won't really be a local experience as such. Also Christmas is a family day, so families go to church, and then home, so not much happening on the streets as such.
Tanzania is predominantly muslim, so not much celebration there.
We spent last Christmas and New Years in Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park in South Africa - in one of it's small (5 tents = 8 guests and one ranger) self-catering wilderness camps. On Christmas Eve, we invited the ranger and our fellow guests to an early dinner. We enjoyed the company of a couple from Germany and another from France, plus the ranger, who was from a nearby village. Each family shared their Christmas/New Years traditions as we sat around the fire under a spectacular blanket of stars. We finished the evening with my DH reading, "Twas the Night Before Christmas" - one of our family's traditions. It was one of our most memorable holiday celebrations ever. I would recommend going on safari at a small tented camp, where you will be able to share Christmas and New Years with a small group of people from all over the world, including the staff. CR
>>Tanzania is mostly Muslim<<
Zanzibar Island off the coast of Tanzania mainland is 95% Muslim, but the rest of the country is more Christian of various denominations.
Though as above... Christmas for those who celebrate is more a family holiday after morning church
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