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| I talked to this man on one of my Christmas village visits. |
It looks every bit as much like Christmas here as it does in America. Christmas decorations and Christmas music are everywhere. Lots of restaurants have special (outrageously expensive, some over $100 per person) dinner sets for Christmas Eve and Christmas.
Most foreigners (Americans, Australians, Europeans) have fled the country to go home for the holidays. Most go at their company expense. There are not many white faces in this city for the holidays.
Young Chinese people, in their 20s and 30s, get together with friends for Christmas dinners on Ping An Ye (Silent Night, their name for Christmas Eve).
Christians flock to special Christmas church services to honor the birth of Christ. But even for them, this is not the biggest traditional holiday of the year.
It is bitterly cold here and may snow tomorrow.
There are signs of the Christmas season, but it still FEELS nothing like Christmas. People are going about their daily routines. There is no holiday spirit, although they certainly will have their own holiday spirit in about six weeks when Chinese New Year comes along.
Today is Christmas Eve. I put on my thickest longjohns today, because on the e-bike, it can get miserably cold. I made a visit to a village where I wished people a Merry Christmas and gave them small gifts, a new kind of Christmas tradition for me in recent years. This is my favorite thing to do at Christmas now.
Then I went to a Christian bookstore. Don't even ask me how it came to be that there is a Christian bookstore in this city/country. Because that would require me to have an answer. And I have no idea.
Later in the day, I went by taxi to deliver something to a friend across town and dropped by Dunkin' Donuts for coffee beans on the way back to my place. DD's espresso coffee beans are just as good as Starbucks' and you get twice the amount for the same price!
Later in the evening, I went to a nice restaurant at an elegant hotel nearby with some friends. Then, on the way home, on e-bike, I detoured by the church to see the Christmas Eve service underway. It was a beautiful thing to see. The church was so packed that people were sitting in various anterooms and hallways, watching the service on closed circuit TV. The historic brick building was outlined in white lights, and twinkling white lights lined the wrought-iron gates outside the church. Policemen stood near the church, there for crowd control (I think that's their story).
I wanted to go in, but it was in the 20s outside, and my experience told me that it would be even colder inside. I can't sit through a two-hour (or longer) service in that unheated building without moving around for warmth, not after just getting over a lung infection especially. I wondered what the temperature was in Bethlehem on the day Jesus was born. I wonder what the temperature is in Bethlehem this year. I'll have to check the Bethlehem weather online when I get back.
I took a photo of the church and moved along. If the temperature warms on Christmas Day, I'll return for one of their other three Christmas services.
Yes, there is some irony that Christians in the Communist country spend their Christmas Day at church, whereas in the Christian country we don't. I'm not judging, because I know it is the western tradition of being with family that we cherish on this day. It's just an interesting observation.
I sang carols on my way back to my apartment. I was exhausted, having had a bad headache all day, so I soon headed to my bed that was pre-heated by my electric blanket. I breathed a word of praise to God my King for sending Jesus to dwell among us. What a lovely, lovely thing to celebrate.
