Hello and welcome to News Hour from the BBC World Service coming live from London.

This is Owen Bennett Jones.

Now Christians in Syria are celebrating Christmas for the first time since the fall of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.

But it is a worrying time for Syria's minorities who had some sort of

protection under Assad and must now worry about what's ahead with the country under the control

of the Islamist group Hyatt Therr al-Shamm. Worshippers in Damascus attended a Christmas Mass

at Our Lady of Damascus Church in the Syrian capital.

Well, the degree of sensitivity that's out there for signs of intolerance was very much in evidence when the burning of a Christmas tree in a Christian majority town near Hammer in Syria became a world news story.

So what does 2025 hold? A strong government or a weak one? Persec persecution or protection, some degree of law and order,

or more civil conflict. Well, Syria's new administration says there has been an agreement among

rebel factions to dissolve groups and merge them under the Defence Ministry. And presumably

that will be very hard to do, but might it happen?

The BBC's Linja Sinjab is in Damascus, and first of all, she was at that Christian service and told me about it.

This was the Zaituna Church, the main Catholic church in the centre of Damascus, it's one of the oldest ones in the city,

and many Christians gathered there, you know, for the Christmas Mass, praying for peace.

But actually, among the crowd, there were also other people coming in, watching the mass and

like listening to the prayer. They were also from the Muslim groups. They were

joining force in celebration. And as we spoke to some of the, you know, churchgoers, they've

expressed their optimism about having peace, praying for peace, but also expressed worried about

what they called us foreign fighters who are in the country and blamed for the events that

happened in Skaylbia,

burning the Christmas tree in central Syria.

...