Iraq’s Cabinet formally declared Christmas to be a national holiday as the country’s Christians celebrated the birth of Jesus amid tight security more than a year after Baghdad declared victory over ISIS who sought to eradicate all who did not follow the group’s strict interpretation of Sunni Islam.

“We extend our warmest wishes to Christians in Iraq and around the world for a very happy and peaceful Christmas,” the government said in a Tuesday morning tweet. The announcement was made today, after the Iraqi Cabinet approved an amendment to its national holiday’s law which creates a new official one ‘on the occasion of the birth of Jesus Christ‘. A tweet on Iraq’s official government handle reads;


Iraq makes Christmas Day an official nationwide holiday lailasnews 1
‘The @IraqiGovt announces Christmas Day to be an official holiday across Iraq. Happy Christmas to our Christian citizens, all Iraqis and to all who are celebrating around the world,’ the Iraqi government wrote on Twitter.

Iraq is a 95 per cent Muslim country – 66 per cent are Shia and 29 per cent Sunni. There are thought to be only around 300,000 Christians remaining in the country, the vast majority of whom are Aramaic-speaking ethnic Assyrians. There are also a smaller communities of Armenians, Kurds, Arabs and Iraqi Turkmens.

Iraq’s Christian population dropped from 1.5 million to approximately 400,000 after the American invasion in 2003 and that number has likely fallen further after ISIS swept across the north of the country in 2014. Iraq declared victory over ISIS last year, but the effects of the fighting are still visible.

In an acknowledgment of the improved security situation, Pope Francis has dispatched his trusted secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, to Iraq to celebrate the Christmas season.

Iraqis attend Christmas Mass at Mar Youssif Chaldean Church, in Baghdad, Iraq, Tuesday, Dec. 25, 2018. Although the number of Christians has dropped in Iraq, Christmas, a national holiday, is very popular in the capital.

Parolin met Monday in Baghdad with Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi and celebrated a Christmas Vigil Mass at the Chaldean Cathedral of Saint Joseph in Baghdad’s Karrada district, which has a significant Christian community. He is scheduled in the coming days to travel to northern Iraq to meet with Kurdish leaders in Irbil and to celebrate Mass in Qaraqosh in the Nineveh plains, near Mosul, according to the Vatican.

Christian communities have existed in Iraq since the first century and the Vatican has urged Christians who have fled persecution in Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere in the Middle East to return to their homes when security conditions permit.

JESUS IS LORD FOREVER AND EVER