Chistmas time in China

It's very odd to be in China at Christmas. In a city like Guangzhou, there are decorations everywhere. Our hotel has a 3 story tree in the lobby. Most restaurant staff are wearing santa hats. I saw a tree decorated inside the entrance to one of the local elementary schools. And they're playing Christmas music everywhere. Strangely, many of the places include the religious songs like "Silent Night" "Joy to the World" and "Hark the Herald Angels Sing". The really odd thing is, I know that 10 years ago, most of these people probably hadn't even heard of Christmas. I read some reports about the holiday indicating that the younger generation loves having a celebration without the family obligations associated with traditional Chinese holidays. One had a quote from a 26 year old saying she'd only done Christmas about 5 times. Personally, I think they're just into the decor, because there's not much of a push for the serious American-style gift giving. Kids may get a small stocking of presents, and adults don't seem to exchange gifts at all.

For those who are wondering, here's how our Christmas Eve & Day ended went:

Christmas Eve was work as usual for Billy. He didn't come early. Everyone I work with is on Vacation, and nearly all my projects are on hold pending management approval, so I'm not working much. In my family, we always went to the candle-light Christmas eve service at church and had a lasagna for dinner. We have an Italian restaurant and a Church of Christ within walking distance, so it seemed worth a shot. Billy called on his way home and asked me to order some pizza so we could eat before we hit up the service. I didn't want to miss out on my lasagna, so I walked to the Italian place and brought us back take-out. On the plus side, I could pay by credit card (delivery boys from Papa John's only take cash). On the minus side, walking half way across the island with the pizza for Billy meant it wasn't exactly hot by the time he got to eat it. Dinner was yummy, if rushed. We thought we'd head to the service at little early (at 7 for a service scheduled for 7:15). Perhaps if we'd gone over an hour to two earlier we could have gotten a seat. The rather small sanctuary was completely full. As was a bible study/overflow room. We wondered around a bit, snapped some pictures, and left after the service started. Turns out the service was mostly in Chinese, as were most of the guests. I was disappointed to find flashing my passport was not required for entry to the church grounds. It's on the US Consulate, but the baracade had been moved back to allow free entry to the church gates. We did notice that all the Chinese in the courtyard had passports in hand. I'm not really sure how things normally work there, but I was very surprised by the turn-out. Outside the compound, the island was quickly filling with people. It seems the Chinese like to take to the streets and wonder around on Christmas Eve. The hotel is a big draw. Some were coming in to attend one of the official parties, most were just coming to take pictures with the impressive decorations. The really, really weird part is that flashing headbands and light sabers seem to play a significant part in the wondering mobs' evening. There were vendors everywhere. And these headbands didn't just light up. Most had glowing or flashing horns. So there were children running all over wearing glowing red devil horns for Christmas Eve. I kinda stalked one of the kids through the hotel trying to snap a good picture (little bugger was moving quick!). We returned to our room after giving up on church, then decided we wanted wine to drink while we watched TV. We tried to hit up a local liquor store, but it was closed. We ended up in one of the tourist shops on the way there (I doubt the place would have been open even if we hadn't stopped). We browsed and haggled for quite a while. I ended up with a pretty purple shawl and green touristy-chinese purse. Billy got a cool present for his dad. We grabbed some ice cream at a convenience store and headed home.

On Christmas Day, Billy went to work again, but got home a few hours early. We got dressed up (I even made Billy wear a tie this time) and headed to our dinner reservations. We'd booked dinner at the buffet we'd gone to before. It was basically the same as any regular night, except they had turkey with cranberry sauce at the carving station and party hats/flashing santa pins at the tables. The price was higher too -- at least it included red wine and champagne. We stuffed ourselves. Billy was very disappointed the santa wouldn't give him any presents (he just handed out little baggies of candies to the children). Oh, and before dinner we recorded the video from my last post. When we left dinner, we could see there were again lots of people walking around wearing flashing horns, though today I was seeing mostly pink, blue, and green. The vendors probably sold out of red the night before!

And no one seems to be taking down the decorations or removing the santa hats yet. I do hope they put it all away after January 1. It'll drive me nuts if they keep this up through Chinese New Year (that's in late January this year, a couple weeks after we leave).