It is the week before Christmas, and Nigel Brooks is sitting in his north Kingston church thumbing through his Bible as he explains his plans for Christmas Day.  But his church does not have a single Christmas decoration, and his plan is to escape the Christmas festivities by going to his cottage in the country.

Mr Brooks is a Jehovah’s Witness, and, like millions of other people in the UK who do not celebrate Christmas, this can be a time of dilemmas and challenges.

For Fuaad Aidares, of the Kingston University Islamic Society, December 25th will be a day like any other.  As a second year pharmacology student he has exams in the New Year, and it will be a day of revision.  Except that, because the university library will be closed and there won’t be any buses or trains, he will study at home.

“I treat Christmas Day as a normal day.  I will do what I normally do, and watch TV as normal to relax after a long day of revision,” he says.

Like Jehovah’s Witnesses, Muslims do not celebrate Christmas because of its pagan roots, and the lack of evidence that the historical Jesus was born on 25 December.  And while for Muslims Jesus is an important prophet, they believe that Christmas wrongly attributes divinity to him.

Hinduism, on the other hand, has many gods, and according to Bhavisha Kerai, President of the Kingston University Hindu Society, Jesus could be one of them.  “It’s not really a contradiction to celebrate Christmas.  Hinduism is not a religion but a way of life.  We celebrate everything.”

For her, December 25th will be a day dedicated to the family, and one of the few days when no-one can use work as an excuse to be absent.  Younger family members will touch the feet of their elders to give them respect and ask for blessings for future, and the family will exchange presents and eat a meal together.

For Steve, a Kingston druid, Christmas Day itself will also be a family gathering similar to the traditional Christian celebration, complete with tree, turkey and all the trimmings.  “It’s more of a philosophy than a religion, and allows people to adopt it in parallel to a Christian outlook,” he says.

Many elements from earlier pagan festivals were incorporated by the early Christians.  For druids, mistletoe is a sacred plant, and when it grows on an oak its white berries are interpreted as the sperm from the sky god mating with the mother earth.  The addition of Christian elements to druid traditions does not stop Steve’s Christmas festivities: “Personally, I have don’t have any problem with celebrating and welcoming other beliefs as well.  There are Christian pagans as well as atheist pagans.”

As a druid, Steve’s real celebration comes four days before Christmas.   On Alban Arthan, or the winter solstice, he will meet with others in Richmond Park or Box Hill to welcome the rising sun and enjoy mulled wine, cakes, songs and poetry.

When Hindu immigrants first arrived in the UK, the children who experienced Christmas at school introduced the celebration to their communities.  The traditions then spread upwards to the older generations.  As a “really open” system, Hindus seem to have little difficulty adapting to the customs of the country they are in.  “The country over here celebrates Christmas, so that’s why we celebrate it,” Bhavisha explains.

Peer pressure affects other groups as well.  Nigel Brooks was brought up as a Jehovah’s Witness and remembers school friends wanting him to join Christmas celebrations.  He thinks this pressure has only grown as Christmas has become more commercialised: “We don’t want children to go to school saying ‘I can’t do it because my mummy and daddy say I can’t do it’.  We want them to avoid Christmas through their own choice.”

Fuaad Aidares also stresses the importance of explaining their faith to children, and Jesus’ place in Islam.  Just as a Christian at a school celebrating Eid might be attracted to the presents, Muslim children in the UK “might feel something in their heart inclined to the gifts and presents, but not inclined to the celebration”.

In a country like the UK where Christmas is hard to avoid, the dilemmas continue into adulthood.  For Fuaad, “some Muslims might attend a Christmas party at work, but they shouldn’t.  It’s completely forbidden.  They are acknowledging a pagan celebration.  If you give or receive a gift you are doing something wrong in your faith.”

When it comes to presents and cards, motive is all important to Jehovah’s Witnesses.  Some of the 62 members of the Kingston congregation may exchange cards, but this can be problematic if it becomes a habit or the cards bear Christmas messages.  Accepting a bonus at Christmas may be fine if it is a reward for work done throughout the year, but not it if is given out of a sense of compulsion because it is Christmas.

Some groups have tried to find their own celebration at Christmas time, allowing them and their children to join the majority of the population in seasonal celebration without subscribing to the Christian message.

Ron Karenga created the week-long Kwanzaa holiday for African-Americans in 1966.  In the 1980s, Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami, the founder of Hinduism Today magazine, created the five day Pancha Ganapati festival as a Hindu alternative to Christmas.

Most notably, the previously minor Jewish holiday of Hanukka, celebrated towards the end of the year, has grown into a major event, giving Jewish families in Christian countries a Jewish rationale for giving presents to children, and lighting the nine-candle menorah instead of a Christmas tree.

For Jehovah’s Witnesses, the birth of Christ matters, but his death is more important.  On the Memorial, the most important event in their calendar, they have unleavened bread and red wine and talk about the significance of his death.

For Nigel, December 25th remains an ordinary day.  As he and his wife drive to their holiday cottage, many other Jehovah’s Witnesses will do what they always do: knock on doors, telling people about their faith.  On this most important of Christian days what response do they get?  According to Nigel Brooks, “mostly indifference”.