The Christmas season is traditionally celebrated at the UWI with gatherings and concerts but most solemnly with one of four annual official services: the Festival of Nine Lessons with Carols which packs the University Chapel on the second Sunday of December at 7pm. The Cave Hill campus also celebrates it and,since 2008, there has been a similar service in Montego Bay, for the UWI Mona Western Jamaica Campus.
Within a couple of years of the University (College) of the West Indies starting up in 1948, officials of the Anglican and Catholic communities were proposing the establishment of separate church facilities on the Mona campus site where the regional university was founded in Jamaica. In 1951, the college was already leaning towards establishing a single non-denominational place of worship. This would come to pass with the completion of the re-located and re-purposed Georgian rum storehouse, dedicated in 1960 and now known widely as the University Chapel.