Christmas Traditions, Food, Decorations and Celebrations in Bahrain
Christmas in Bahrain is celebrated on the 25th of December with a surprising openness for a Gulf nation, thanks to the island kingdom's long reputation as one of the most cosmopolitan and tolerant corners of the Arabian Peninsula. While it is not a public holiday and the country is firmly Muslim-majority, Bahrain is home to a large and diverse expatriate community, and the season is marked visibly and without fuss.
Malls deck themselves in lights and trees, hotels lay on lavish Christmas dinners, and the substantial Christian expat population - Filipino, Indian, Western and Arab Christian alike - celebrates freely. Bahrain has always traded with the world, and it treats the world's festivals with the easy hospitality of a place that has welcomed visitors for several thousand years.
Bahrain has a genuine and visible Christian presence, with churches that hold packed Christmas services and a tradition of religious tolerance that is notable in the region. The island is the seat of a Catholic vicariate covering much of the Arabian Peninsula, and its churches draw worshippers from dozens of nationalities.
As across the Muslim world, Jesus is revered as the prophet Isa, so the figure at the heart of Christmas is treated with respect by all. The result is a Christmas that is genuinely practised rather than merely tolerated - candlelit, multilingual, and quietly remarkable for where it is happening.
Santa makes the rounds of the malls and hotels of Manama, posing for photographs with the children of a hundred different nationalities, and the gift-giving follows the familiar Western pattern within Christian and expat households. For Bahraini Muslims, the great gift-giving occasions remain the two Eids, but the December lights and the visiting Santa are met with the same relaxed curiosity that has always characterised the island.
There is no single Bahraini Christmas dish, but the island's extraordinary expatriate mix means the Christmas table here might be the most internationally varied on earth. A Filipino household will produce lechon and bibingka; an Indian Christian family will lay on biryani and rich Goan or Keralan sweets; a Western expat will hunt down a turkey at considerable expense and great satisfaction.
Layered over all of it is Bahrain's own superb cuisine - machboos, the spiced rice and meat dish, fresh Gulf fish, dates and Arabic sweets - so that a single festive gathering can span three continents before the pudding even arrives. It is, in its way, the most honest expression of what Bahrain has always been - a small island that made its living by welcoming the whole world, and now sets a Christmas table to match.
Manama's malls and hotels go all out, with towering trees, light displays and carol singers, and the city of Manama takes on a genuinely festive air through December. Carol services, school nativity plays and community gatherings give the expat population a real sense of the season, while the wider Bahraini public takes it all in with characteristic good humour. It is Christmas as a cosmopolitan event - less a single tradition than a happy collision of dozens. Communities organise carol concerts and charity drives, schools stage their nativity plays, and the season becomes a genuine point of connection across the island's many nationalities, a shared December that belongs to everyone who has made Bahrain their home.
Bahrain is small and city-centred, so its Christmas is concentrated in and around Manama, where the expat communities, churches, malls and hotels are. The festival here is less about a regional folk tradition and more about the meeting of many traditions in one tolerant, trade-minded island - a Christmas defined by its sheer variety.
In Arabic, a season's greeting is Eid Milad Majid, glorious birth feast, while across the expat communities you will hear Maligayang Pasko, Merry Christmas, and a dozen other languages all wishing the same thing at once - which is, when you think about it, the entire point.
• Bahrain is one of the most religiously tolerant Gulf states, with visible churches and open Christmas celebrations.
• Its large, diverse expat community makes the Bahraini Christmas table extraordinarily international.
• The island is the seat of a Catholic vicariate covering much of the Arabian Peninsula.
• Manama's malls and hotels host elaborate trees, lights and carol services each December.
Written by Morag Sinclair, who is charmed by a single Christmas dinner that can travel through three continents before the pudding arrives.
Primary source:
Watch the Santa Claus channel on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/@santaclaus-top