圣诞快乐！Merry Christmas!

While the U.S. has been inundated with Christmas decorations, and sales since at least Halloween, if not before, China (at least in Xi’an) has been quite the opposite. In fact, most shopping malls, and restaurants didn’t start putting up Christmas decorations until less than one week before the holiday! By about the 23rd of December, when I went downtown, it finally felt like Christmas was near, minus the snow.

Christmas in China, however, is not like the holiday I’m used to. It’s quite a bit different. There’s really no religious aspect to it at all. They’ve stripped it of all religious meaning and left it to simple Christmas trees, Santa Claus, and other agnostic cheer.

“Christmas has never been this important to me before” – Jinfei

On Christmas eve day, I had 3 classes, and in each class at least one student gave me an apple wrapped nicely in colorful celophane. This wasn’t the typical “Apple a day” for the teacher thing, it was actually because apples are a symbol for safety and are frequently given to friends on Christmas eve. Partly this is because Christmas eve is called “ping an yi” and apples are “ping guo” so you give a ping guo on ping an yi. There seems to be a lot of the word play in idioms and traditions here, if something sounds like something else that’s viewed as lucky or happy, they’ll just stick them together. But that’s another topic for another time.

I kept a little Christmas cheer going on here at school by teaching my students Christmas songs in English, and taking them out carolling. A lot of the students really enjoyed it, as did the people we sang for. Most of the singing was done in the backstreet (a small street with numerous shops and restaurants frequented by the students), and in the small village just south of our school. Most of our audience members enjoyed the singing, some

Christmas Caroling

clapped, some wondered what the hell we were doing, some ran away. The difficulty was that none of the people we were singing to knew about carolling, couldn’t understand the songs, and perhaps didn’t even know it was Christmas. My Chinese parents told me that Christmas is a relatively new concept here, typically only younger people celebrate the holiday. The older generation don’t even know about Christmas, to them, it’s just another day. In fact, my girlfriend’s mom said she knew a couple weeks ago that Christmas was coming, but had no idea what day it was even on.

Christmas eve downtown was pretty interesting, though it felt like a New Years eve style celebration more than anything. The streets around the belltower were closed to traffic and people were partying in them. There was silly string, masks, Santa hats, music, colorful devil horns, confetti, and busy bars. Christmas here is a “friend holiday”, a time to hangout with your friends. The family holiday is on Chinese New Year, whereas in America, on New Year’s eve, we tend to hangout with our friends. Just the opposite I guess. But I enjoyed myself downtown, hung out with a few friends and met up with a few more at the local hostel-bar. I took it in as a Chinese would celebrate the holiday.

Bar Street on Christmas Eve

Christmas day I had a couple more classes, we went caroling as I had done with my previous clesses as well (these are all different students, so it’s not like I took the same students carolling six times). After classes, I hungout with my girlfriend, exchanged gifts (she got me a great scarf, and I got her a fleece jacket). I listened to my hometown church service over internet radio which was nice.

My colleague Jake helped his students plan a Christmas party so I attended that Christmas day evening. The party was a lot of fun and included a lot of

Cake Fight!

traditional Christmas snacks that Jake’s mother had so generously sent him. The meat and cheese tray was a huge hit, we played mahjong, darts, and a few relay type games. Near the end of the party we had some Christmas cake, which turned into a bit of a cake fight. But all in good fun of course.

At the end of the night Jinfei and I called my parents on Skype, and it must have some great Christmas luck that the video worked so well. Jinfei and I were able to be in my parents house on Christmas morning as they opened their presents and saw what I had gotten them. It felt good to be able to be “with” my family for Christmas. As we settled into bed Jinfei told me, “Christmas has never been this important to me before”.

Youtube video of my students singing.

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