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27 December 2014

Why Christmas Is Huge in China

DEC 24 2014

A Western religious festival takes on Chinese characteristics.

A worker at a factory producing Christmas decorations in the Chinese city of Yiwu (Reuters/China Daily)

BEIJING—There’s a joke going around: “Santa Claus was descending into China from the sky. Due to the heavy smog, he fell to the ground, but no one dared help him up. While he was still lying in the snow, his bag was ransacked for presents, and his reindeer and sleigh taken away by the chengguan. Therefore, no Christmas this year.”

While some of the humor needs context—there are digs at China’s notorious bystander effect and much-despised urban-management officials, chengguan—the larger meaning is clear. Ironic jokes about Santa’s routine being disrupted with uniquely Chinese characteristics are a sure sign that, yes, they do know it’s Christmas time in communist China.

The Chinese Town That Turns Old Christmas Tree Lights Into Slippers Retailers lead the way here: An annual spending season that once focused on Chinese New Year in the winter is now bloated and elongated, stretching from the invented Singles' Day on November 11 through February, with Christmas as a kind of hump day. Even before December, shops, streets, and hotels begin filling with slightly off-kilter Yuletide scenes: performers in elf suits play traditional cymbals while a grinning plastic Santa Claus toots a saxophone outside his gingerbread cabin. Why the sax? Theorists point to everything from romantic associations with the avuncular Bill Clinton jamming on the instrument in the 1990s, to the smooth alto-sax muzak that is the preferred soundtrack of Santa’s typical dwelling, the shopping mall.

There’s no sign of Jesus, but in many big cities, you’re still more likely to see Father Christmas’s face than that of “Uncle” Xi Jinping, as state media has characterized the country’s president, presenting a homely, familial image that’s quite at odds with the repressive manner in which he’s coldly eliminated opponents. But Xi is not above the fray himself, visiting Santa’s official cabin in Rovaniemi, Finland in 2010.

The Western religious festival is so trendy, in fact, that it may be the second-most-celebrated festival in China after the Spring Festival among young Chinese, according to research conducted by the China Social Survey Institute (CSSI), which found that 15- to 45-year-olds are the most likely to observe it. The holiday’s popularity is an outgrowth of study-abroad programs, said Sara Jane Ho, whose Institute Sarita specializes in educating wealthy Chinese on aspects of Western culture such as how to properly pronounce “Hermes”—the brand, rather than the Greek deity (the ‘h’ is silent, and the second ‘e’ accented).

Eighty-five percent of wealthy Chinese send their children to countries like the U.S., U.K., and Canada for higher education, according to Hurun Report, a kind ofChinese Forbes. Around 275,000 Chinese students enroll annually at American universities, accounting for more than 30 percent of all international students in the country. When the holidays send their American peers home to family and friends, Chinese students often turn to each other for companionship. Like returning missionaries, these “sea turtles” then bring their own version of Christmas back home.

People pose for photos with Christmas decorations in front of a shopping mall in Beijing. (Jason Lee/Reuters)Christmas is “an excuse to party” whereas Chinese festivals are comparatively “solemn, serious, and spiritual,” Ho told me over mulled wine and petit fours. Instead of gathering around the family table for a turkey dinner (“Chinese don’t entertain at home,” Ho pointed out), most go to “entertainment places”—movie theaters, bars, or karaoke clubs—or out to eat, the CSSI survey noted. “Christmas is just an excuse to go shopping, as there are many big sales at a lot of places,” admitted Mo, a 33-year-old sales executive in Guangzhou. “The theme is to have fun.”

And at the end of a long and stressful year at work, it’s an opportunity to take stock and kick back. The CSSI survey lists “relaxation after a busy year” and “experience the new year’s atmosphere” among the top reasons cited for celebrating Christmas, along with “be closer to friends and colleagues” and “use the romantic atmosphere of Christmas to spread love.” Some take the latter rationale quite seriously. “Have you heard of such a phrase in China, ‘Silent Night, First Night?’” asked Long Fei, an assistant pastor at an “underground” church in Beijing whose activities are not officially monitored or approved by China’s religious authorities. “Many young people choose to give themselves to their beloved on this eve and eat forbidden fruit.”

The Christmas spirit has even reached as far as China’s sweltering south. Since 2009, a Santa Claus Post Office has operated in Guangzhou, offering specially stamped postcards, inked in Chinese calligraphy, and sending Santas, laden with donated gifts, to children in remote parts of the country. In sunny Sichuan, an official 13,000-square-meter replica of the Finnish Santa village that Xi visited is currently under construction, curiously titled “Floraland.”

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