Pantomime.
Merry Christmas
There are nine letters in the word "Christmas." Each letter represents a single character in the word, but it does not necessarily equate to the number of distinct words within the word itself. In this case, the word "Christmas" is a single word comprised of nine characters.
One proper name is the town of Bethlehem. One word not directly related to Christmas would be "messianic".
Christmas
An eight letter word for an Italian dessert is tiramisu.As in "this tiramisu is delicious!"
dessert
torte
zuzu
Port.
mousse
The nine letter word is tolerable.