Rites Around the World

Nine months of unrest in Syria have stripped Christian neighborhoods of any sign of Christmas joy as Syrian Christians have decided to cancel celebrations and only observe Christmas mass.

The Gurung ethnic group are indigenous people of Nepal's mountainous valleys and have a population of 700,000, or three percent of the Himalayan nation's population.

The Newars of Nepal, for example, celebrate kanyādān as part of what is called mock-marriage (ihi) or bel marriage, often also referred to as first marriage. This first marriage occurs before a girl menstruates and is meant to initiate her into adulthood. Through kanyādān, the girl is symbolically married to the bel fruit, which is a symbol of the god Shiva, ensuring that the girl becomes and remains fertile and that she will never be a widow, even if her husband dies. Besides the virgin-gift offered by the father of the girl, the ceremony also includes a fire sacrifice. Neither of these rites are part of the ceremony accompanying the girl’s second marriage to a human husband.[4] Unlike traditional Newars and many South Indian communities, most North Indian communities combine the first and second marriage in one ritual.
Before Newar girls reach their puberty they are married to the fruit of wood-apple tree called Bel. It is performed at the girl’s odd age like 5, 7, 9 before they starit menstruation. Ihi is a two-day ceremony commencing with purification rituals and ending with “Kanyadan” of the girl by her father meaning “giving away the virgin”. This Kanyadan ceremony performed in Non-Newar Hindu marriage. So Ihi could actually be taken as the first marriage of the Newar girls except for that they are married to an icon of Suvarna Kumar, the immortal God.

India's Muslims are a minority in the predominantly Hindu state, but they are one of the largest Muslim populations in the world.